Preface.  Although I am mainly concerned about peak oil, we’ve become so incredibly dependent on the electric grid, including electricity to pump oil at gas stations, that if the grid came down from an EMP or cyberattack, millions of people could die.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

***

Wald, Matthew L.   August 16, 2013.   As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow. New York Times.

The electric grid is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.

This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. anti-terrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyber attacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.

One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities. One example is a substation break-in that officials initially think is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB drive to upload a virus into a computer network.

The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing the electric system.

The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies. Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power, according to the White House.

There are 5,800 major power plants and 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, monitored and controlled by a staggering mix of devices installed over decades.  Many rely on Windows-based control systems that …may be vulnerable to software — known as malware — that can disable the systems or destroy their ability to communicate, leaving their human operators blind about the positions of switches, the flows of current and other critical parameters. Experts say a sophisticated hacker could also damage hard-to-replace equipment.

Preparation for the November drill comes as Congress is debating laws that could impose new standards to protect the grid from cyberattacks, but many in the industry, some of whom would like such rules, doubt that they can pass.

The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes involving the grid.

A National Academy of Sciences report last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying crucial components.

An attack using an electromagnetic pulse is laid out in extensive detail in the novel “One Second After,” published in 2009 and endorsed by Newt Gingrich. In another novel, “Gridlock,” published this summer and co-written by Byron L. Dorgan, the former senator from North Dakota, a rogue Russian agent working for Venezuela and Iran helps hackers threaten the grid. In the preface, Mr. Dorgan says such an attack could cause 10,000 times as much devastation as the terrorists’ strikes on Sept. 11, 2001.

Despite the growing anxiety, the government and the private sector have had trouble coordinating their grid protection efforts.

Another problem is that the electric system is so tightly integrated that a collapse in one spot, whether by error or intent, can set off a cascade, as happened in August 2003, when a power failure took a few moments to spread from Detroit to New York.

Related articles (some of these links may be broken as I republish which changes the url)

• Cyber Attacks an unprecedented threat to U.S. National Security, a review of U.S. House of representatives March 21, 2013 session on Cyber attacks
• Will we go out with a whimper instead of a bang? Cyberwar more likely than nuclear war
• It’s only a matter of time before Cyber Terrorists launch attacks
• Military Threats: Peak oil, population, climate change, pandemics, economic crises, cyberattacks, failed states, nuclear war.
• China is working on cyber attacks of our infrastructure and stealing secrets 
• Emergency drill: Cyberattack on electric grid. Wald, Matthew L.  August 16, 2013.   As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow. New York Times.
• Cyber Attack Methods. Who are the cyber attackers?
• Energy infrastructure cyberattack targets
• Actual cyber attacks
• House hearing: protecting small businesses against cyber-attacks 2013
• S. House: Iranian cyber threat to the United States

Electric Grid

• Electric grid large power transformers take up to 2 years to build. Excerpts from Department of Energy “Large Power transformers and the U.S. electric grid”.
• EMP effect on electrical transformers. A review of Dr. Jeff Masters 2009 “A future Space Weather catastrophe: a disturbing possibility”.
• The EMP Commission estimates a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up to 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse
• Electromagnetic pulse threat to infrastructure (U.S. House hearings) from the transcripts of the 2012 and 2014 hearings
• Chip Fab Plants need electricity 24 x 7. The electric grid needs chips. The Financial system needs both.
• Electric Grid Overview
• Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System. National Academy of Sciences.  Excerpts from the National Academy of Science 2012 “Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System” & 2013 “The Resilience of the Electric Power Delivery System in Response to Terrorism and Natural Disasters”
• What would happen if the electric grid was cyberattacked?