NYTimes.com
As Worries Over the Power Grid Rise, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow
Frank Franklin II/Associated Press
New York City during a
blackout in 2003. More than 150 companies and groups will take part in a
drill that will simulate attacks on the power grid.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: August 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts
describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary
lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the
continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel
and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a
scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of
Sept. 11.
This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National
Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from
government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are
preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical
attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the
power grid.
They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever
seen, and more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to
participate.
“This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the
Southeast and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said
the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC. “We really want to go beyond that.”
One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.
“If we fail at electricity, we’re going to fail miserably,” Curt Hébert,
a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a
recent conference held by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Mr. Harrell said that previous exercises were based on the expectation
that electricity “would be up and running relatively quick” after an
attack.
Now, he said, the goal is to “educate the federal government on what
their expectations should or shouldn’t be.” The industry held a smaller
exercise two years ago in which 75 utilities, companies and agencies
participated, but this one will be vastly expanded and will be carried
out in a more anxious mood.
Most of the participants will join the exercise from their workplaces,
with NERC, in Washington, announcing successive failures. One example,
organizers say, is a substation break-in that officials initially think
is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB
drive to upload a virus into a computer network.
The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the
government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing
the electric system.
The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled
by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies.
Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power,
according to the White House.
The utilities play down their abilities, in comparison with the
government’s. “They have the intelligence operation, the standing army,
the three-letter agencies,” said Scott Aaronson, senior director of
national security policy at the Edison Electric Institute, the trade
association of investor-owned utilities. “We have the grid operations
expertise.”
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