Electricity Today T&D Magazine

The realization that the vast majority of substations have significant security vulnerabilities was crystalized after the Metcalf incident of April 2013, during which unknown assailants caused the failure of 17 transformers at the Silicon Valley PG&E transmission substation in Metcalf, California. Jon Wellinghoff, then Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), later told the Wall Street Journal that it was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.”

FERC, the U.S. federal agency that governs the U.S. power grid, then directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the reliability standards organization for the bulk power grid, to develop the CIP-014 standard, necessitating each utility undertake an assessment of their physical security infrastructure, and develop a comprehensive security plan that addresses major and minor transmission site security. The final version of CIP-014-1 was adopted by FERC in November 2014, with enforcement actions...