Hoping it’s not too late, federal energy officials moved Thursday to protect the nation’s electric grid from a “Black Swan” killer blackout caused by a solar flare or terrorist attack.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted 5-0 to finish the process of creating a new reliability standard that will govern electric transmission systems and protect them from “geomagnetic disturbances,” including electromagnetic pulse.
Once fully adopted, the agency plans to give special attention to high voltage transformers which have been the target of terror attacks.
Solar flares can be harmful to the electric grid. (AP Photo)
FERC Chairman Norman Bay said the goal is to block a so-called “black swan” event when the grid goes dark from a rare, high-profile and unpredictable event.
Meanwhile Thursday, Reps. Renee Ellmers, North Carolina Republican, and Jerry McNerney, California Democrat, introduced legislation to create backup electric transformers which can take months to build and would be needed if the grid were to blow.
Ellmers, co-chair of the Grid Innovation Caucus, said, “This will better prepare us so that we have the ability to repair the grid and restore power whether there is a natural disaster or a targeted attack.”
McNerney, the other co-chair, added, “Studying the potential need for strategic spare transformer locations throughout the country has the potential to bolster our ability to respond to these incidents more effectively, benefitting our families, businesses, and vital programs that all rely on a responsive electric grid.”
A handful of states are already moving to “harden” the grid in their areas due to concerns of solar activity and terrorist threats from nations including Iran and North Korea. A congressional study estimated that most people hit with a blackout lasting a year or longer would die.
In a statement, FERC said the geomagnetic disturbances can “distort, with varying intensities, Earth’s magnetic field. These events are considered to be ‘high impact, low frequency’ events, but can have potentially severe, widespread effects on reliable grid operation, including blackouts and damage to critical or vulnerable equipment.”
Thursday’s vote, it added, will adopt a “proposed standard that sets requirements for transmission planners and owners to assess the vulnerability of their systems to a ‘benchmark GMD event,’ which [the North American Electric Reliability Corporation] described as a ‘one-in-100-year’ event. If an entity does not meet certain performance requirements based on the assessments, it must develop a plan to achieve the requirements.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
