GRID THREATS REQUIRE IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE:

The U.S. electric power network is poorly equipped to restore electricity service to large areas blacked out by natural disasters or hostile attacks, a National Academy of Sciences panel warned yesterday in a report that looks into dark future scenarios that it says the nation and the public have not fully faced up to.

“The electricity system, and associated supporting infrastructure, is susceptible to widespread uncontrolled cascading failure, based on the interconnected and interdependent nature of the networks,” the panel concluded in a 297-page report ordered by Congress and funded by the Department of Energy. “Despite all best efforts, it is impossible to avoid occasional, potentially large outages caused by natural disasters or pernicious physical or cyber attacks.”

Seven or eight years ago I gave a talk to a local business group on this subject. During Q&A an audience member said he thought the threat of a cyber attack on the electrical grid was exaggerated. A moment later another audience member identified himself as having worked on control and security issues for a utility company. He said nope, the threat to the grid is real and, in an extensive network, spotting all the vulnerabilities is difficult.