Subcommittees Hold Hearing on Electric Grid Vulnerabilities
(Washington, DC) – Today the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittees on Oversight and Energy held a hearing titled, “Examining Vulnerabilities of America’s Power Supply” to review and discuss the various vulnerabilities of and potential threats to the nation’s electrical grid.
Members and witnesses emphasized the need for greater investments in addressing our aging energy infrastructure, microgrids, battery storage, and preventative measures that can address some of the minor incidents that have led to major blackouts in the past. Dr. Granger Morgan from Carnegie Mellon University highlighted the need to better train operators and provide the necessary technological capabilities to ensure the workforce is prepared to take the appropriate actions in the event of an anomaly affecting the grid. Additionally, the Members discussed other threats to the grid, including cybersecurity attacks, physical attacks on key infrastructure components, and the impacts of potential High-Impact Low-Probability events, such as Geomagnetic Disturbances (GMDs) that can result from solar flares and the use of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon that can destroy critical electrical grid components and lead to widespread and long-term outages of electricity.
Ranking Member of the Energy Subcommittee, Alan Grayson (D-FL), said in his statement for the record, “We as a society are increasingly dependent on the services electricity provides, and the electric grid has quietly become the basis of our modern lives. However, our electrical system is under constant stress from severe weather, malicious acts, and age. The stress on the system is constantly increasing as we dramatically change how we want to use the grid now, versus what it was designed to do, when it was built.”
He continued, “Over the past 100 years we have incrementally created our electric grid, adding and subtracting equipment as the system expanded and became more interconnected. Our electrical system is considered one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering. We should be proud of this accomplishment. But our work is not done.”
Ranking Member of the Oversight Subcommittee, Don Beyer (D-VA) said in his statement for the record, “How we confront these multiple vulnerabilities and emerging threats is not straight-forward.
There is no silver bullet to eradicating these threats. There is no cure-all for ensuring that the electric grid will never go down. It will – at times – as we have seen most recently due to the power of natural storms and the fragility of our aging electrical infrastructure. Ensuring that we are prepared to recover from these potential events in a timely manner and able to restore power to critical facilities, such as hospitals, quickly demands our collective attention, from industry, the Administration and Congress.”
Congressman Beyer recently submitted a request for the Government Accountability Office to investigate grid resiliency and dependency, alternative power supplies, and power grid R&D. View the letter here.
In addition to Dr. Granger, the other witnesses testifying before the Subcommittees were Mr. Richard Lordan, Senior Technical Executive, Power Delivery & Utilization Sector, Electric Power Research Institute; Ms. Nadya Bartol, Vice President of Industry Affairs and Cybersecurity Strategist, Utilities Telecom Council; and Dr. Daniel Baker, Distinguished Professor of Planetary & Space Physics, Moog-BRE Endowed Chair of Space Sciences, Director, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder.
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