— by Ed Sutton —
This past Sunday morning on CBS News “Sunday Morning,” retired national news commentator Ted Koppel discussed the vulnerability of the national electric grid to cyberattack. In his just published book, “Lights Out,” he spoke to the consequences of our government and large electric generating companies NOT having plans in place to react or respond to such a terrorist attack. Efforts by the staff of CBS Sunday Morning did not yield any response from those companies. Further, Koppel advised that former leaders of Homeland Security stated that our country has no such plan.
Here in the San Juan Islands we know of the immediate consequences of disruption to the distribution of electric power in the Islands. Just a short time ago, damage to a submarine transmission cable bringing power to the Islands from the mainland grid resulted in a significant disruption of service for an extended period. An accident as simple as an auto crashing into a power pole on Oakes Ave. in Anacortes can cause a power outage here of some consequence.
So, what is Plan B for the San Juan Islands? OPALCO buys our electric power from Bonneville which uses the hydro dams in eastern Washington to generate that energy. Then those kilowatts are transmitted to us over elevated transmission lines and, in our case, those submarine cables. Ted Koppel is stating that those transmission lines are subject to cyberattack. Cyberattack as a form of terrorism is insidious because it can come from any source or location. Koppel reported that the Russians and the Chinese already have cyber access to our electric grid.
Should we here, in the San Juans, have a local Plan B? Should we, collectively, be able to generate locally some 25% of our total demand in an emergency situation? Those of our neighbors who have some solar generation capability, or who heat with wood should be more able to meet their own needs. Most of the residents and businesses in the County are totally vulnerable to an outage.
Should our local grid have redundancy by way of solar and/or wind generation? Should OPALCO buy several new diesel generators for location in our population centers? Should we all assess our individual energy situation and take action accordingly? The answer to these questions is probably YES for them all.
The first questions would seem to be, “Does San Juan County, and OPALCO have a Plan”?
How vulnerable are we, here, to a major cyberattack, OR, any other disruption of our power source? A repeat of the submarine being severed, in the minimum, is not acceptable.
We all should know the answer to these questions.
OPALCO has safeguards in place and conducts regular emergency restoration exercises. This is an industry concern with many checks and balances in place. If our power transmission is disrupted on the mainland, we will be subject to outages. If an extended outage occurs, as it did on Anderson Island in 2009, we would do as Tanner Electric Cooperative did and bring in temporary generators. Ed asks, “should we all assess our individual energy situation and take action accordingly?” I agree that the answer is “yes.” For members whose specialized equipment, safety or livelihood depends on power, you should have a back-up plan. For all members, whether an outage is caused by monkey business or winter storms, we should be prepared with flashlights, batteries, blankets and bottled water. Go to our site http://www.opalco.com/outages for some good information –and also visit the San Juan County Department of Emergency Management at http://www.sanjuandem.net/.
I’d bet we are better prepared than most of America because we’ve had to deal with long power outages time and again. But I don’t think OPALCO having the backup capacity to generate 25% of the demand, say by diesel generators, is a workable solution unless there was also a means to limit that demand to 25%. Otherwise users would overload the system and it would crash again. And grid-connected solar systems would not be able to function unless there was a source of 60-cycle power for their inverters to synchronize with. Only off-grid systems would work.
The only real solution is individual backup generators for critical needs like water supplies and medical resources, with sufficient fuel supplies to keep them running until the grid is restored. That includes homes like ours that rely heavily on heat pumps for space heating, which are useless without electricity.
The County got a grant to do emergency planning some years ago and has employed two emergency managers for several years. I would expect that they have had the time to consider this and have something to offer. Perhaps they will post it on the County’s website?
The point of the article was to draw attention to the question(s) being asked at a national level, and to then ask how such a large scale event might impact us here.
Interestingly, as part of Koppel’s discussion was reference to an electric
Co-op in southwest Utah that generates its own power from hydro flows from the Rocky Mts. Oh, that we could be so independent.
Peg Manning speaks to grant monies given to the County to study responses to such emergencies. It would be most interesting to see what their Plan B might be.