PHYSICAL SECURITY OF THE U.S. POWER GRID: HIGH-VOLTAGE TRANSFORMER SUBSTATIONS

High voltage (HV) transformer units make up less than 3% of U.S. transformers, but they carry 60%-70% of the nation's electricity. Because they serve as vital nodes, HV transformers are critical to the nation's electric grid. [...]despite the technical arguments, without more specific info...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current politics and economics of the United States, Canada and Mexico Canada and Mexico, 2017-04, Vol.19 (2), p.247-295
Main Author: Parfomak, Paul W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blogs
Congressional committees
Electric power
Electric utilities
Electricity
Electricity distribution
Energy
Government agencies
Infrastructure
Modernization
Prevention
Security management
Testimony
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:High voltage (HV) transformer units make up less than 3% of U.S. transformers, but they carry 60%-70% of the nation's electricity. Because they serve as vital nodes, HV transformers are critical to the nation's electric grid. [...]despite the technical arguments, without more specific information about potential targets and attacker capabilities, the actual risk of a multi-HV transformer attack remains an open question. Legislative proposals including the Enhanced Grid Security Act of 2015 (S. 1241), the Critical Electric Infrastructure Protection Act (H.R. 2271), the Terrorism Prevention and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2015 (H.R. 85), a House bill to establish a strategic transformer reserve program (H.R. 2244), and the Grid Modernization Act of 2015 (S. 1243) would expand these activities by strengthening federal efforts to prevent or recover from a physical attack on the U.S. grid. Utilities regularly experience damage to transmission towers due to both weather and malicious activities; they are able to recover from this damage fairly rapidly. [...]while occasionally causing blackouts, physical attacks on towers generally have not resulted in widespread or long-lasting outages.
ISSN:1944-1274