Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Tuesday that the U.S. electric grid is increasingly threatened by both cyber threats and the threat of severe weather caused by a changing climate.
“Make no mistake about it, the attacks on the energy infrastructure from cyber[attacks] are continuing to escalate,” Moniz told House appropriators at a energy and water subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the agency’s budget.
He said the grid will need to be hardened against these threats, in line with growing risks from more extreme weather, and said the president’s fiscal year 2017 budget reflects that.
He said the department is helping to build a large “microgrid” in New Jersey, which is a so-called self-healing electricity system that can keep essential services up and running in the wake of a catastrophic storm, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“There are many, many directions here, but they all aim to a complete modernization of the grid that will in some sense … be integrated all the way from the consumer to, all the way up to the high voltage grid you need to move, say, renewables over large distance,” he said.
