Calling it a speed record on the power grid, a New York Times blog highlights a recent drill to replace a transformer. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), CenterPoint Energy and the Department of Homeland Security were all in on it.

 

Faster transformer replacement is important because transformers are perhaps our greatest security weakness. They are all custom designed and custom ordered and typically take six months or more to arrive from an overseas manufacturer. Since few utilities have "spares" on hand, a terrorist who took out a few key transformers could badly cripple our critical infrastructure. Moving toward standardization could help this dangerous situation.

In the drill, transformers were shipped on an expedited basis from an ABB factory in St. Louis on a Monday and arrived at a substation near Houston on Tuesday. They were up and running by late Saturday, which the Times says was earlier than drill organizers anticipated.

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As the Times explained: "A crucial part of the exercise was rethinking the transformers. Normally, transformers of this type are single units. But the odd nature of electricity on the high-voltage grid prompted workers to break the voltage into three parts, which also ensured that the replacements would be small enough to transport on roads."

 

You can read more about the drill here.

 

You might also be interested in…

In our discussion forum: Smart grid security: What worries you most?

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From the Smart Grid News store…

Smart Grid Security: An End-to-End View of Security in the New Electrical Grid

Industrial Network Security: Securing Critical Infrastructure Networks for Smart Grid, SCADA, and Other Industrial Control Systems

Securing the Smart Grid - 2nd Edition

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