Protecting the Electric Grid

Protecting the Electric Grid

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9799581_mIsraeli security experts point to the need to better protect the power grid. The experts say that some attacks that took place in the U.S lately, have exposed new threats including “basic”, ones that can cause “dramatic” power supply problems.

According to HLS News Wire security experts are concerned that last year’s attack, which is yet to be solved, on an electrical-power substation in San Jose, California, is but a prologue to similar attacks which, if executed simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion against several such substations, could cripple the U.S. power grid.

The Wall Street Journal offered a detailed report on the 16 April 2013 incident at the Metcalf transmission station in San Jose. The transformers at the substation, vital for regional power distribution, were shot at by several gunmen and disabled for twenty-seven days.

The Washington Post reports that the attack did not cause major power disruptions because officials were able to reroute electricity around the damaged substation.

What is especially worrisome, security experts note, is that the attack appeared to have been carried out by people with some training, although the FBI said the agency does not think it was the act of terrorists. The Journal notes that shell casings left at the scene had no fingerprints on them, and investigators notices piles of small rocks near the point from which the shooters fired their weapons, indicating that a scouting team may have watched the power station before that shooting.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

The attack began with at least one person entering an underground vault to cut telephone cables. The attackers then fired more than 100 shots, disabling seventeen transformers. The attack lasted fifty-two minutes, indicating that the shooters, based on their scouting of the area, knew they would not be noticed or disrupted.

It’s still an ongoing investigation,” Brian Swanson, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), which owns the substation, told the Post. “We’re not going to speculate as to the possible motive before the investigation is complete.”

Transformers such as those disabled in the attack are an essential and difficult-to-replace component of the national electrical grid.

The Post notes that in recent years, much of the concern about the safety of the electrical grid focused on cyberattacks, but the California attack was a demonstration that inflicting physical damage on a substation could be disruptive.

An attack on any one substation may be compensated for by rerouting power, but the worry is about several such substations, especially if they are located in the same region, attacked at the same time, an event which would likely result in partial collapse of the grid and long blackout periods.