The electric grid is in trouble

Federal officials are warning that the vulnerable U.S. electric grid is increasingly coming under attack by bad actors looking to wreak havoc by knocking out power.

The latest warning about the power grid comes from a Congressional Research Service report out this month which warns, based on private energy sector assessments, that the U.S. power industry has failed to achieve “the level of physical security needed based on the sector’s own assessments of risk.”

“There is widespread belief that bulk power critical assets are vulnerable to physical attack, that such an attack potentially could have catastrophic consequences, and that the risks of such attacks are growing,” the report says. “But the exact nature of such potential attacks and the capability of perpetrators to successfully execute them are uncertain.”

Particularly concerning to the authors of the report are rifle attacks on transformer substations in recent years, the earliest of which occurred in 2013 and the most recent in 2016.

“Although the electric power sector seems to be moving in the overall direction of greater physical security for critical assets, many measures have yet to be implemented and the process of corporate realignment around physical security is still underway,” according to the report.

“The September 2016 rifle attack on a 69 kV transformer substation in Utah—which reportedly left 13,000 rural customers without power for up to eight hours—showed that similar incidents could occur almost anywhere on the grid,” the report continues.

The CRS report warns that the widespread power disruptions brought on by these small attacks could be a sign of even more extreme problems that could come from organized terror attacks on the grid.

“While to date there have been only minor attacks on the power system in the United States, large-scale physical destruction of key parts of the power system by terrorists is a real danger,” the academy warned. “Some physical attacks could cause disruption in system operations that last for weeks or months.”

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