The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) have released a comprehensive report that pins the 2011 Southern California blackout on inadequate planning and grid coordination. Last September, millions of people in Southern California, Arizona and Mexico's Baja California were left in darkness after an employee's work on a transmission line at an Arizona substation triggered a massive blackout. The report dives into the causes of this incident, areas effected and the timeline of the system collapse and restoration.
The report’s overall recommendation calls for an improvement of bulk power system operators’ situational awareness through improved communication, data sharing and the use of real-time tools. It lists 27 specific recommendations to that end, each addressing specific findings from the investigating team. The full report can be accessed at http://1.usa.gov/KoSCTy

On February 1, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity approved by voice vote an amended version of HR 3674, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PRECISE) Act of 2011. In keeping with the House Cybersecurity Task Force Report released last year, the bill focuses on improving and incentivizing information sharing between the government and the critical infrastructure on cyber threats and incidents. PRECISE would establish DHS as lead federal agency for the coordination of federal and critical infrastructure cybersecurity efforts, the development of a national cybersecurity strategy, and the formulation of voluntary cybersecurity guidelines. Read more »

U.S. utilities are structuring intelligence into their networks with the aim to make power distribution more efficient; however these efforts are getting caught in the myriad of regulations that leave their security efforts incomplete, inadequate and uncoordinated. According to a new report released by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a single federal agency should be in charge of the nation’s critical infrastructure security, instead of being spread across a group of organizations, as it currently is. The findings also stated that this greater reliance on data communications in the grid increases the importance of standardization for interoperability and of cybersecurity and raises serious issues of privacy. Additionally, the report also discussed the potential risk factors to the grid from the impact of federal regulations, rising prices for fossil fuels and competition from sources of renewable energy. It largely stated that with the right policy measures, the grid would be able to handle the influx of electric vehicles as well as renewable generation sources including wind and solar. Read more »

The Department of Energy has announced a $1.4 billion partial loan guarantee to support an initiative, Project Amp, that seeks to install of solar panels on industrial buildings across the country. The project plans to use the 733 megawatts(MW) of electricity generated from the panels to feed directly into the electric grid rather than powering the buildings where they are installed. The solar panels will go on 750 existing rooftops owned and managed by Prologis, and is expected to produce up to 1 million MW hours annually. NRG Energy is the lead investor in Phase 1 of the project that involves a 15.4 MW installation in Southern California, and the power from Phase 1 will be sold to Southern California Edison. Additional installations will be built in up to 28 states and the District of Columbia.

The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has signed a partnership deal with Duke Energy and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)to further the testing and deployment of ARPA-E funded projects which seek to boost the modernization and advancement of the electric grid.

The DOE press release states: "Through the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), ARPA-E, Duke Energy, and EPRI will identify opportunities to expand cutting edge smart grid developments, grid-scale energy storage, power electronics, and energy efficient cooling technologies, among others. This new umbrella deal, which will allow for similar partnerships with other utilities, comes two months after ARPA-E announced six of its projects have secured more than $100 million in outside private capital investment."

 A recent study conducted by the Idaho National Laboratory for the Department of Energy reported on security vulnerabilities in the computer networks that control the electric grid. The report expressed concerns that gaps, such as a failure to install software security patches or poor password management, allow for intruders to redirect power delivery and steal data. This study is based on the findings of 24 assessments of computer-control systems performed between 2003 and 2009. It was completed in May and released July 22 on the Energy Department's website. Read more »