Girding the Grid: U.S. Power Supply Remains Vulnerable

Recent news of a shooting attack on power substations in North Carolina is raising new concerns about the safety of the U.S. electrical grid. That attack knocked out power and water to about 50,000 people for several days, with investigators saying the perpetrators "knew exactly what they were doing." In the days that followed came reports of similar recent attempts to shoot or sabotage power substations across the country, from Florida to Washington. "The reality is it's actually quite prevalent with the frequency in which the grid is attacked," says Tommy Waller, executive vice president with the Center for Security Policy and power grid expert. "According to federal stats, from January 2010 to this year, there have been 919 physical attacks on grid infrastructure."

Waller warns that threats to our power supply go much deeper than attacks like the one in North Carolina. "Physical attack is just one vector," he tells KTRH. "You've also got electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, you've got cyber attack, and you've got supply chain attack---all ways that humans can take down the grid."

While there has been a lot of talk about hardening the grid in recent years, action has not followed at the federal level. Waller and his group have been pushing for change long before the recent headlines. "We levied a formal complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), about what we consider to be a very weak and under-enforced standard for physical security (of the grid)," says Waller. "And federal regulators dismissed that complaint, unfortunately...so we remain vulnerable."

"Incidents like this (in North Carolina) certainly help raise awareness about this issue, but the reality is for some of these threats, if we don't start acting now, it may be too late when something bigger happens," he continues.

The good news, according to Waller, is the technology and the money already exist to harden the grid from physical and electromagnetic attacks. Now we just need the will to actually do it. "We can protect the entire national grid for less than one-third of one percent of the cost of the infrastructure bill," he says. "Yet that's not what they're spending money on."