Shockingly vulnerable US power grid could result in 18-month nationwide blackout, expert warns

See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google.

Key points

• The gunmen fired 120 shots, taking out an alarming 17 transformers at a Pacific Gas and Electric's Metcalf electrical substation just outside San Jose, New York Times Magazine documented.
• It have even shorter service lives than their smaller cousins, was 38-40 years old in 2014.
• After learning regarding the analysis, Wellinghoff briefed the White House, Congress and the Department of Energy concerning the alarming findings.
• "In the next 15 years, we're going to spend as much on the grid as we have spent in the last 150 years, " Holt remarked.
• It the outlet notes is actually divided into three sections: the Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections.

For context, the US is at a heightened risk of a catastrophic blackout that could last up to 18 months due to aging power grid infrastructure that takes agonizingly long to update and is potentially vulnerable to a precision weapon strike.

After a coordinated attack on a California electrical substation in April 2013, the alarming vulnerability was brought to light in 2013 by Jon Wellinghoff, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Meanwhile, the gunmen fired 120 shots, taking out an alarming 17 transformers at a Pacific Gas and Electric's Metcalf electrical substation just outside San Jose, New York Times Magazine documented.

FERC shortly thereafter conducted a power flow analysis to model how a disruption at critical substations – where multiple high-voltage lines meet – would impact the US power grid. It the outlet notes is actually divided into three sections: the Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections. "We came up with some very astounding numbers, " Wellinghoff remarked.

"If you knock out nine total substations along those three grids, you can black out the entire United States."

As long as each was among the 10 most notable in its respective region, and that with enough guns the entire grid could be taken out in 20 minutes, he remarked it didn't even matter which nine were hit.

"It's probably something that a bunch of 12-year-olds with the internet could do pretty easily. All you have to do is look at a map of the grid and figure out where most of the wires go into the substations – that's a critical substation, " Wellinghoff remarked.

Meanwhile, the blackout resulting from such an attack, he cautioned, could last 18 months or more.

"I basically wrote a memo about what happened and gave it to everybody I could to explain to them that we needed to do something immediately, linking what we had done in our analysis with what had been physically done at Metcalf."

It took PG&E 27 days to bring the substation back online after the attack. It remains a mystery and no arrests have been created.

According to Wellinghoff, if it took a team of grid repair experts a month to fix a substation while the grid still had power, it would probable take significantly longer during a nationwide blackout.

Then there's the difficulty of the system's age, and its loose confederation of 101 regional balancing authorities nationwide that manage the flow of power generated and distributed by the three interconnections.

One transformer manufacturer remarked around 75% of the distribution transformers – the kind commonly seen on street corners and telephone poles – are older than their 50-year life expectancy.

Meanwhile, the average age of sizeable power transformers. It have even shorter service lives than their smaller cousins, was 38-40 years old in 2014.

In practice, the average wait time to replace a sizeable transformer at a major substation. It are built to handle tens or even hundreds of thousands of volts, has jumped from less than a year to a staggering 128 weeks since 2021 alone, the outlet writes, with some lead times exceeding five years.

"The transformer shortage is bad, " energy analyst and former municipal resource planner Ajey Pandey, an energy analyst and a former municipal resource planner, informed tech media outlet ChinaTalk. "It's like hair-on-fire, biting-my-nails, losing-sleep levels of bad."

And it's projected to secure even worse, Tim Holt, in charge of grid technologies for Siemens Energy, informed the outlet, with transformer demand in 2027 on pace to more than double the demand seen in 2020.

Taken together, the developments around shockingly vulnerable US power grid could result in 18-month nationwide blackout, expert point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.