Using Rifles to Shut Down Power Grid

[Watson91]

Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778



Anyone work in the power industry? I am an EE for a large design firm working in Transmission & Distribution and received this Wall Street Journal article in my email a few days ago. I found it interesting and disturbing at the same time. The article struck up some conversation at work about what changes could be made to America's back bone, one of our greatest assets sitting in the wide open.


Any thoughts on the subject or article?

 

[black4vcobra]

I work for a company that designs distribution systems, mostly for municipal utilities. We discussed this briefly at lunch one day and it is certainly an area where this country is vulnerable. Many large substations and switching stations are isolated and all it takes is a puncture to the tank of a piece of equipment (transformer, switch, regulator, etc) and all the oil will drain out and the equipment will fail. We all know that in urban areas, if people were without power for more than a couple of days, all hell would break loose with rioting and mob behavior.

I know it's different for larger utilities but most of our municipal utility clients do not yet have any real-time monitoring of their substations so they are very vulnerable to attack, though they likely would not be targeted. Some of the substations we design, we put up concrete walls around them, more for decoration but they are designed to withstand fire from high powered rifles. Maybe this is a good first step towards protecting electrical facilities.

From my understanding though, our water supply is even more vulnerable than the electrical grid and of course we are always at risk of cyber attacks. Scary world out there.

 

[tistan]

First thing we could do is publicly torture terrorist that are responsible for carrying out attacks on Americans. Then, their families should mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night never to be seen again. Then, when were done torturing them, if they are Muslim, we should bury them alive with a rotting pig carcass. Non Muslims just get buried alive. Best deterrent is to make someone afraid to **** with you.

 

[Digital]

**** that. americans want cheap power. and increase in security = higher power cost = no no

 

[dirtyd88]

It's crazy how simple it would be. Just think of some of the larger subs that people like Oncor, MidAmerican, Duke, and the larger T&D firms that are just sitting out in the middle of rural American, and I'm sure some in the city, than aren't really guarded......

 

[My Cobra]

Crazy people all over.

 

[CobraBob]

You know what's really scary? Everything is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Here we are today discussing a potential terror risk on home soil. Imagine what we could be talking about just 5 years from now. The world is rapidly changing, and much of the change is not good. Very scary for our children and their children.

 

[MovingZen]

Aren't most insulators made of ceramic? I don't think protecting our sub stations would really make all that much difference other than fake peace of mind. Of course there may be something I'm missing here so :shrug: Hopefully that was dumb asses and not some sort of test.

 

[sunburned]

How are we supposed to protect and secure ALL of our infrastructure from nutjobs who want to cause chaos? The costs would be insane. Just think if every substation out there was a guarded fortress or built underground in a vault. We couldn't afford that power.



You know what's more ridiculous? The media basically exploiting every weakness that we "may" have in our infrastructure. Of course we have to do 'what if' scenarios to better our security and responses to breakdowns or whatever, but why the **** does it have to be all over the 5 o'clock news?? In their effort to scare the shit out of people for ratings, they are just GIVING terrorists and domestic nutjobs all kinds of great ideas.

Like some news story years back talking about a train that hauled nuclear waste from a power plant or something and how close it got to mass populated areas. They were like "OMG this could totally be a target for terrorists and almost equivalent to a dirty bomb". The public probably didn't even know about the train before and everything was perfectly safe, but now all the jihadists and psychos have to do is watch the news and it'll give them all the plans they need to **** up society!

I'm more worried about what the media is doing to this country than terrorists...

 

[pho_phizzat]

I know some old timers from the lineman side of things. When they were in contract talks with the contractors and the talks where not going their way. Sometimes they would retaliate by going out and shooting off insulators. It not only would it cost the company it would provide extra work for them callouts and such.

 

[dirtyd88]

Aren't most insulators made of ceramic? I don't think protecting our sub stations would really make all that much difference other than fake peace of mind. Of course there may be something I'm missing here so :shrug: Hopefully that was dumb asses and not some sort of test.

They are, but you also have to think of the supporting equipment. Take a transformer off line, puncture an oil reservoir, either ot those can cause issues.

I know some old timers from the lineman side of things. When they were in contract talks with the contractors and the talks where not going their way. Sometimes they would retaliate by going out and shooting off insulators. It not only would it cost the company it would provide extra work for them callouts and such.

That's just dumb.

 

[black4vcobra]

Aren't most insulators made of ceramic? I don't think protecting our sub stations would really make all that much difference other than fake peace of mind. Of course there may be something I'm missing here so :shrug: Hopefully that was dumb asses and not some sort of test.

Insulators are mostly made of porcelain actually, though many places are starting to use polymer insulators which are advertised as being able to get shot without being damaged as they are essentially self healing.

The substations are really the important part, besides generation facilities of course, which should be at least somewhat guarded. Even if a dumbass threw a chain up into overhead lines, the fault would likely only burn up a fuse or once the chain was removed a line or substation recloser would restore power.

Line faults can usually be cleared easily, but it's not easy to replace a even a small 7.5 MVA distribution transformer which costs around $250k and has a lead time of several months.

 

[MovingZen]

Ha, I didn't even think about fuses. I've just looked at some of those really big towers and wondered what happens if one of those insulators breaks and the line drops. Porcelain makes it sound even more vulnerable to a shearing force or whatever.
I had no idea the expense of those transformers. What's the primary voltage on something like that? Are those the ones I see in different places around subdivisions? I imagine if the fools who shot up that one station are caught they are gonna be in a world of hurt based just on equipment cost alone.

 

[black4vcobra]

Ha, I didn't even think about fuses. I've just looked at some of those really big towers and wondered what happens if one of those insulators breaks and the line drops. Porcelain makes it sound even more vulnerable to a shearing force or whatever.
I had no idea the expense of those transformers. What's the primary voltage on something like that? Are those the ones I see in different places around subdivisions? I imagine if the fools who shot up that one station are caught they are gonna be in a world of hurt based just on equipment cost alone.

The insulators are made strong enough that they will not break without being tampered with. In someone did mess with it, it wouldn't be the first time a power line ended up on the ground, though that doesn't happen too often with transmission lines (the big towers). There are ways to route power around the fault in the case of failure of an individual line.

Small substation grade transformers typically "transform" voltage from a transmission line (35, 69, or 138 kV are mostly what I see but can be as high as 500 kV) down to a distribution voltage of 4, 12, or 25 kV. The transformers that you see on poles (gray cans) or pad mounted (green boxes) are what transform the primary voltage to secondary voltage - 120/240, 208, 277, or 480 depending on application.

 

[thomas91169]

Unless someone attacked a shitload of stations at the same time, throughout the west coast (not just in CA) not much would happen. Power can be redirected, these parts can be replaced within 24hrs. Unless these people carrying out said raids are sticking around to plink off any repair workers as they show up, 1-2 days max repair time.

 

[7998]

I know, we could beg and plead for the government to create a new department to provide security to these sub stations and implement road blocks and mandatory searches with in a 5 mile radius of all stations. They can put unicorns and crayons on the bottom of their jack boots so when they remove them from our necks it leaves behind a pretty imprint.
If we were really worried about terrorism we would close the borders to stop letting them in. And stay out of most of the conflicts we've been involved with(Iraq,Libya,Egypt,Syria,West Africa, etc,etc,etc...), and wouldn't supply radical islamists with weapons

 

[Watson91]

I know, we could beg and plead for the government to create a new department to provide security to these sub stations and implement road blocks and mandatory searches with in a 5 mile radius of all stations. They can put unicorns and crayons on the bottom of their jack boots so when they remove them from our necks it leaves behind a pretty imprint.

Best solution to the problem yet! You kind of went off track with the second part so I removed it from my quote.. I hope you don't mind.

I would take a good guess that people would be surprised how unable we are to "redirect" the power sometimes. That only works on a certain level. I know in the greater St. Louis area I could pick out about 3 or 4 substations that with the flick of a switch I could kill power, with minimal redirection efforts being successful, to the whole St. Louis area. I don't know that there is a great solution to the problem. As many have stated most solutions would cause an increase in power costs that can't be afforded. On a positive note many larger transmission subs are upping their security and remote abilities with video surveillance and newer technology on the inside. Many substations are susceptible to cyber attack in this day and age. Not that this should surprise anyone. Many of the substations I work with daily are still running electromechanical equipment though.

 

[VenomousDSG]

I've talked about this recently with my father, he is paranoid like i am. It would be fairly simple to mess up the power grid in this country, and we are fairly vulnerable to it. If something were to happen, all hell would break loose.

 

[Monkeygrits]

I saw a show, I think it was doomsday peppers where some guy shot a transformer which had no power, demonstrating how you could drain it's oil and use it as bio diesel. He had some hose contraption mounted on a long pole to catch the oil. Hell I didn't even know they had fluid in them until I saw this nut.

 

[carrrnuttt]

Unless someone attacked a shitload of stations at the same time, throughout the west coast (not just in CA) not much would happen. Power can be redirected, these parts can be replaced within 24hrs. Unless these people carrying out said raids are sticking around to plink off any repair workers as they show up, 1-2 days max repair time.

Unless this was just a dress-rehearsal for a bigger, more critical attack.

Or.

It was to test system response time.

And scarier:

Both.

Then again, my imagination (and lots and lots of movie watching) makes me wonder if this wasn't just a heist and some prototype is now missing from a Silicon Valley lab.