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Resilience
Resilience
As concerns grow over severe Black Sky hazards,
lifeline utilities and State and Federal government agencies have been
systematically expanding initiatives seeking to mitigate such extreme
events. Resilience planning and investment represent the foundation on
which any such mitigation efforts must be built.
As has often been said, “20-20
hindsight” following an extreme event comes too late to make the strategic
investments that could have reduced the impact of such an event. Nevertheless,
planning and implementing such measures is often challenging, requiring
decision makers and stakeholders to make investments to address projected risks
which, while serious, may yield little or no immediate benefit. And
though hazards that have occurred with reasonable frequency suffer less from
this investment challenge, emerging threats – even when projected consequences
are extreme – are a much greater challenge.
Increasingly, this issue is being addressed by
expanding the use of tabletop exercises to both simulate hazards and allow key
stakeholders to explore the impact of such hazards, while considering the
benefits and projected needs for resilience measures. The EPRO Black Sky
Hazard Event Simulation Project represents a new example of such exercises,
helping utilities, government agencies and other stakeholders evaluate
the needs and benefits of specific resilience investments for Black Sky
Hazards.
E-Threats: An example of the growing focus on resilience
As an example of this expanding focus, resilience
strategies for E-threats (EMP and GMD), as the newest examples of emerging
Black Sky hazards, are receiving increasing industry attention, and are a
special focus of the hazard protection section of the EPRO Handbook, Volume 1.
A key finding of recent studies, including the reports of the
recently reestablished Congressional EMP Commission, is damage caused by both
EMP and GMD, while affecting very large regions, is expected for only a
fraction of exposed, vulnerable electrical and electronic components. EMP,
for example, will not destroy all electrical and
electronic components, devices and systems in an affected area. While
complex, computer-intensive control systems (including unprotected power grid
control systems) will typically fail or be disrupted, most electrical and
electronic hardware in the region will likely survive. This result is
crucial, providing a foundation for planning a strategic framework for
resilience, focusing on targeted, cost-effective investments to provide
strategic, protected “enclaves” or protection of restoration-critical
infrastructure.
The E-PRO Handbook discusses this resilience
strategy along with recommended companion measures for accelerated restoration,
such as protection for control centers and selected, critical long lead equipment,
properly stored and staged spares, and EMP-protected emergency vehicles,
tooling and communication gear. Implementing such strategies involves
planning for a cost-effective combination of mitigation investments,
operational measures and comprehensive power restoration planning.
Expanding the focus on the power grid’s Black Start system:
A critical requirement for Black Sky Hazard resilience
The core resilience foundation of the three
Electric Interconnections that make up the U.S. national power grid is the
Black Start system: Generating stations and cranking paths designed to be
capable of restarting – and functioning as a starting point for grid restart –
following a local or regional power outage. This system has been the
subject of careful planning and investment, and is properly considered a
reliable and essential basis for resilience of the power grid from the full
range of “Gray Sky” hazards experienced in modern times.
The Black Sky / Black Start Protection Initiative (BSPI)
It is vitally important to note – that
the Black Start system was not designed to address Black Sky Hazards. The
Black Sky / Black Start Protection Initiative (BSPITM) examines Black Sky- associated limitations of
the Black Start system, along with recommended enhancements and system
architecture adaptations, as a starting point to consider upgrades to that
system to address the extreme hazard scenarios represented by Black Sky
Hazards.
Black Sky Power Grid Restoration
An essential feature of any resilience plan is companion
planning for effective use of the resilience investments. For the power
grid, for example, while it is certainly vital to ensure that essential tools
and assets needed for Black Sky Hazards will be available when needed, these
capabilities will only be effective if they are embedded in upgraded
restoration and training plans.
# # # # One finding emerging from EPRO ESC meetings
has been a concern, voiced frequently by senior power company executives, for
availability of trained, specialized labor to handle the expected,
unprecedented restoration workload. These executives have pointed out
that, typically, trained engineering teams capable of handling projected
hazards like Cyber or EMP are already, in normal, Blue Sky Day scenarios,
significantly understaffed. In Black Sky Hazard scenarios, they point
out, staff availability is likely to be significantly reduced, precisely at a
time when far greater trained, expert engineering teams will be absolutely
essential.
For Gray Sky Hazards, a mechanism to address this
concern is now being explored by the power industry: Expanding Mutual
Assistance programs, currently designed to provide line crews and “bucket
trucks” to move between companies and geographic regions to help address local
or regional disasters, to include a similar capability to exchange engineering
teams.
# # # # For Black Sky Hazards, such an expansion of
conventional Mutual Assistance programs, while important and helpful, will not
come even close to providing sufficient capability. With widely
distributed, multi-region power grid hardware and IT and OT system disruption
and damage, finding, isolating and repairing problems will require far larger
levels of trained engineering staff, and with many regions facing the same
needs, availability of engineers from other utilities will be limited.
The CPR Engineering Team model
In these scenarios, one highly leveraging approach
will be to build plans for supplementing staff, to address such emergencies,
from outside the power industry. The CPR Engineering Team Initiative lays
out examples or templates for such a mechanism. Based on plans for
advance certification and periodic training of engineers with expertise in the
appropriate disciplines, the CPR model would provide a capability for added
engineering and technician staff, to expand the capabilities and be closely
directed and utilized by the normal, internal corporate engineering
teams that will be in very short supply for such emergencies.
