Industry experts recently testified before Congress that more needs to be done to protect the nation’s electric grid from natural disasters, cyberattacks, physical threats and planned sabotage. Recent news stories have highlighted grid security issues, including analysis by USA Today that claims the U.S. Department of Energy’s computer systems were compromised more than 150 times between 2010-2014. And while cybersecurity is a persistent threat, physical damage to “critical infrastructure” facilities from severe storms, flooding, wildfires, and even shootings, has the potential for extensive, long-duration outages:
- Critical high-voltage substations, while representing only 3% of all substations, carry the bulk of the nation’s electric power.
- Large power transformers at these high voltage substations are particularly visible and thus vulnerable to attack, as evidenced by the sniper attack on the PG&E Metcalf substation in 2013, causing $15 million in damage.
- Grid security experts are also concerned about other high-impact, low-frequency events such as severe electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic disturbances.
Critical infrastructure protection standards for physical grid security (CIP-014) were approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in January 2015, with the first key enforcement deadline for an assessment of critical assets required on October 1, 2015. Compliance with the new standards requires utilities to identify substations, control centers and transmission lines that if damaged could cause widespread outages and cascading grid failures. The next steps require utilities to identify potential threats and develop a plan to address these vulnerabilities such as perimeter protection, video surveillance, and restricting access.
While utilities implement measures to comply with CIP-014, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee has unanimously backed a plan to create a national strategic reserve of large power transformers. Such a program would facilitate the replacement of damaged transformer equipment and faster restoration of power delivery.
Distributed generation provides a level security and resiliency that central power stations find hard to match. When distributed generation is in the form of CHP, it can have pretty good carbon… Read more »
I am intrigued by distributed generation. I worry, however, that there are (at least) two major hurdles to overcome to have nothing to do with policy. The first is reliability.… Read more »
Mr. Vorobeychik Thank you for your comments. Two points in response. First, distributed generation systems often use multiple heat engines – whether RICE units or turbines – and they often have… Read more »
To maximize security from physical attack, I can think of three things to do: (1) “the usual,” responding to the kind of vulnerabilities and options discussed in detail In the… Read more »
Thank you for the interesting insights. With regard to distributed generation – I think the idea that microgrids provide resiliency is true, as we have seen examples of this as… Read more »
We have a series of conflicting trends and issues effecting the electric grid, and we need need to acknowledge them. The first is we have an unguarded grid both physically… Read more »
Scott, I think you are off the mark with regard to utilities blocking distributed energy policies, and probably just not aware of the work that is being done. For example, Duke Energy… Read more »
Dawn, first of all, thank you for starting and nurturing this dialog and the resulting discussions. Thank you, responders, for your comments and insights. New to OurEnergyPolicy.org, but not to… Read more »
I am pleased to read that more people now see the many very good reasons to change the structure of our electricity system. The future system will be very different… Read more »