- The United States is at risk of a nationwide blackout that could last 18 months, according to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Jon Wellinghoff became aware of the alleged vulnerability after a shooting at a Pacific Gas and Electric Company's San Jose substation, according to the The New York Times Magazine.
He conducted a power flow analysis that modeled the large-scale effects of knocking out the most critical substation in each of America's three power grids: the Western, Eastern and Texas interconnections. He said this led him to discover just how easy it would be to cripple America's power supply.
'We came up with some very astounding numbers,' Wellinghoff said. 'If you knock out nine total substations among these three grids, you can black out the entire United States.'
It does not matter which nine substations are taken offline either, he noted, as long as each one is among the 10 most important for its region.
Alternatively, bad actors could blackout the three interconnections individually.
'I mean, it's not like there are particular substations,' he explained. 'You just have to figure out what are the top 10 critical ones in each of those interconnects - which to do that, 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.'
Once he made that terrifying discovery, which came back in 2013, Wellinghoff briefed the White House, Congress and the Department of Energy.
'I basically wrote a memo about what happened and gave it to everybody I could to explain to them that we need to do something immediately,' he said.
It warned that a blackout caused by lost transformers could last 18 months or longer.
The Department of Homeland Security then sent a delegation around the country, urging utilities to increase security at their substations.
