The country’s largest solar energy utility is using Super Bowl 50 to play up its clean energy record, while the increased security around San Francisco this weekend reinforces the fact that the same utility was recently a target of a sniper attack.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Pacific Gas and Electric is a major part of the Super Bowl’s activities in the Bay Area as the official “Clean Energy Partner” of the game.
The utility, one of the largest in the nation, plays up the fact that it installed more solar energy last year than any other company in the country.
“PG&E connects a new solar customer to its electric grid approximately every 11 minutes,” it said in a press release announcing its role in Super Bowl 50.
It says it reached a significant milestone in 2015 of connecting 200,000 solar customers to the electric grid, which it is required to do under California’s host of climate change and clean energy laws.
But underneath the clean energy hype, security concerns surrounding this year’s game are higher than ever, after the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks last year.
The FBI is coordinating security across the region. And that increased security presence has not bypassed the utility company.
PG&E spokesman Matt Numan said the company is coordinating with law enforcement and other agencies in the city “to make sure everything goes smoothly.”
He said the company is paying attention to its electricity and natural gas facilities in and around the city to make sure everything is secured, although he would not elaborate on details or say if it is guarding against any specific threat.
Numan said the company is “making sure we monitor … to make sure things are secure.”
In 2013, PG&E was a target of assailants who targeted electricity substations near San Francisco, in an apparent attempt to bring down northern California’s power grid.
The April 2013 attack at PG&E’s Metcalf Transmission Substation in Santa Clara County — where the game is being played — was carried out by snipers wielding high-powered rifles. Although the attackers were never found, the attack had far-reaching impacts for the industry. It spurred the U.S. government to require utilities to comply with new physical security regulations and raised awareness of the vulnerabilities facing the electricity grid.
The federal security standards require protections for utility facilities only that interact with the interstate transmission grid, and not the grid at the retail level that is overseen by the state.
PG&E says it has increased surveillance since the attack.
“Since the incident occurred, PG&E has worked closely with federal, state and local agencies, as well as outside expert consultants to improve substation security throughout our system,” said Joe Molica, PG&E’s electricity communications principal, in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Molica said some of those enhanced measures include security guards to provide a round-the-clock presence at critical substations, in addition to increased patrols from local law enforcement.
At Metcalf, permanent barriers to shield equipment and obstruct views have been installed, he said. Enhanced detection and deterrent systems, and improved lighting and camera systems were also installed. The security upgrades also are being made throughout its network of substations, he said.
U.S. utilities were placed on alert by federal regulators after last fall’s attack by Islamic radicals in Paris and once again after Ukraine officials said their power grid was attacked by computer hackers who managed to cut electricity to thousands of citizens in that country for several hours.
A spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s federally sanctioned grid security organization, told the Examiner that no alert has been issued for the Super Bowl.
Nevertheless, news reports out of California on Friday said the Department of Homeland Security had been seeking advice from French officials in an effort to ensure against a Paris-like attack on the largest sporting event of the year.
California suffered an attack by a radicalized Islamic couple last December who attacked and murdered 14 co-workers in San Bernardino outside of Los Angeles.
San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr told NBC News that the events in San Bernardino and Paris illustrate how quickly threats have escalated “in an uncertain world.”
