Having worked for DoE in 2011-2012, I saw a lot of this information first hand. It’s only a matter of time when one of these critical components goes down. Bear in mind, all the power delivery main lines are privately held…so it’s up to the owners to maintain and balance power. It’s the Coordinating councils such as WECC (wecc.org) that make sure the grid doesnt buckle under it’s own fluctuations.
A cyber attack against the Coordinating councils would indeed bring things down. It would be only a matter of hours until the system collapsed. There are three grids, East, West and Texas. Each one is maintained and supported individually.
The mockumentary on NatGeo last night American Blackout which will be repeated on Tuesday night 6pm CST, shows what indeed can and would likely happen based on human nature and the preparations that most have not taken. If you’re interested, please watch, this is indeed the stuff we’ve been talking about and with the former head of Homeland Security (Janet Napalitano) saying it was only a matter of time when a cyber attack hits, it’s likely we’re much closer to this scenario than they are saying.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-electrical-grid-on-failure
Over the last couple of decades, power outages have affected just about every American. These outages cause the average U.S. electrical utility customer to go without power for an estimated 214 minutes every year, costing the U.S. economy up to an estimated $55 billion annually.
- July 1977: 9 million New Yorkers lose power for over 24 hours after lightning strikes an electrical substation on the Hudson River
- January 1981: Almost the entire state of Utah goes dark after prisoners on a work assignment accidentally knocked out transmission lines. 1.5 million people, in almost all of Utah, as well as parts of southeastern Idaho and southwestern Wyoming lost power.
- October 1989: The Loma Prieta earthquake knocked out power to over 1.4 million people in Northern California due to damaged electrical substations.
- January 1998: Over 3.5 million people were affected by blackouts that hit northeastern North America, when transmission towers were destroyed by ice.
- 2000-2001: The Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001 hit California causing rolling blackouts that lasted for over 12 months.
- August 2003: Power line problems in the Midwest triggered the worst blackout in U.S. history, cutting power to 55 million people in eight states and Canada, some for more than a day.
- September 2011: Days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the largest Blackout in California history left nearly seven million people without power, in what many believe was act of Terrorism. No official cause has ever been given.
- 2012: Hurricane Sandy and the Midalantic storms of 2012 leave over ten million people without power, some of them for weeks.
The list above is only a fraction of the power outages that have been experienced over the last couple of decades, and experts are warning about a frighteningly increase in non-disaster-related outages. Significant power outages have risen from 76 in 2007 to 307 in 2011.
This happened 10 years ago on the east coast…the collapse that started in Ohio was the failure of a monitoring station and a bad sensor…it took the east coast into darkness
http://globalnews.ca/news/777665/10-years-after-blackout-north-american-grid-still-vulnerable-to-failure/
Two years ago, the West coast grid took out two states and northern Mexico…
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/Sep/08/californias-worst-power-failure-started-arizona-de/
http://offgridsurvival.com/powergrid-emps-terrorattacks-gridfailures/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/us/imagining-a-cyberattack-on-the-power-grid.html
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Cascading_failure?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com