Well, duh.
Big article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism, that reports on a coordinated attack at a California substation that sounds like a scene from an action film.
According to the article, the information came from former FERC Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff, who has taken up lurking around substations in his dotage. Apparently Wellinghoff was horrified at the substation attack last April and the subsequent realization that our grid is astonishingly vulnerable and there's not much FERC can do about it.
I know what FERC can do about it... Stop promoting centralized generation and an increasing network of high voltage transmission lines to trade electricity like a commodity from coast to coast!
If you think substations are vulnerable, spend a few minutes pondering the thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines strung everywhere. True, an attack on one remote tower may not have much effect and could be easily fixed, but what about a coordinated attack on hundreds of towers that supply our cities at the same time?
Our military isn't dumb enough to rely on a power supply this vulnerable, so why should we? As far back as 2007, the U.S. military was studying electric grid vulnerability and concluded that "distributed generation" (yes, they used quotes, like Dr. Evil with his "laser") was our best defense.
And so it is - our military is practicing distributed generation.
So, when is Congress going to put a stop to the transmission feeding frenzy and start protecting the rest of us?
Big article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism, that reports on a coordinated attack at a California substation that sounds like a scene from an action film.
According to the article, the information came from former FERC Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff, who has taken up lurking around substations in his dotage. Apparently Wellinghoff was horrified at the substation attack last April and the subsequent realization that our grid is astonishingly vulnerable and there's not much FERC can do about it.
I know what FERC can do about it... Stop promoting centralized generation and an increasing network of high voltage transmission lines to trade electricity like a commodity from coast to coast!
If you think substations are vulnerable, spend a few minutes pondering the thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines strung everywhere. True, an attack on one remote tower may not have much effect and could be easily fixed, but what about a coordinated attack on hundreds of towers that supply our cities at the same time?
Our military isn't dumb enough to rely on a power supply this vulnerable, so why should we? As far back as 2007, the U.S. military was studying electric grid vulnerability and concluded that "distributed generation" (yes, they used quotes, like Dr. Evil with his "laser") was our best defense.
And so it is - our military is practicing distributed generation.
So, when is Congress going to put a stop to the transmission feeding frenzy and start protecting the rest of us?
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