Power to the people

My paranoid rant about threats to the national power grid sparked an electrifying conversation last week. (Sorry, folks, but the puns are just gonna get worse from here on.) Some of it happened online, and some of it off. I thought I’d share some of the best ones.

Commenter exssnrg (aka, “excess energy”) points out that I quote Ira Winkler, whose alarming claims about the insecurity of the nation’s power grid were made exactly one year from the day I posted that screed — April 10, 2008. Oops. Never noticed that. Maybe we should declare 4/10 national Get Your Scivvies in a Cinch over SCADA Day.

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Excess goes on to add:

This story does nothing to account for sweeping regulations that have been put into place in the last year which dramatically increase security and reliability of our power grids. Soon you will see Utilities who fail to comply with these regulations face enforcement action.

My god, those “sweeping regulations” are coming straight for us. Run for your lives!

But Cringester T. L. has taken a good look at the NERC’s CIP — North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Critical Infrastructure Protection — and advises us not to hold our breath waiting for those “enforcement actions” to happen:

As near as I can tell, the self-policing policies favored by the industry players has resulted in a club that does not want to punish members who transgress. The original FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] response to the NERC proposals for self-regulation included a remark that several of the proposed rules were “missing compliance elements.”… The safe, reliable, efficient operation of this shared critical resource needs more attention.

D. S. , who works in a nuclear power plant, reassures me that I probably won’t wake up one night to find myself glowing:

I wanted you to know that off-site power loss is planned for and Safety Drilled for regularly. We have two alternate power sources and we can draw power from the adjacent plants if required. Furthermore, the security you are discussing is for the grid with conventional power producers. The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] has required us to spend millions to protect against cyber attacks. All that said, we have already shown that the grid is vulnerable. . . The nucs are safe.  They may shutdown but they are safe.

That’s good. Because as useful as it may sound at the moment, I don’t really want to grow any extra limbs.

Reader H. F. brings up an excellent point about using cyberspies to infiltrate the grid:

If it were so easy to hack the power grid than why does the U.S. always bomb the electric infrastructure when we attack a country like Iraq, and turn around and use tax payer money to rebuild it again? Wouldn’t it be a lot more effective and less expensive to use our superior U.S. technical knowledge to hack their grid, turn the power off, and back on when needed?

I think he’s right. We should start a “bots for bombs” movement. Think of the money we’d save, not to mention employing all those out of work hackers.

And, of course, G. K. chimes in with the inevitable:

Good article, but the whole thing seems like another ploy for the Obama administration to push it’s socialist agenda.

Yes comrade. And when the revolution comes Rush Limbaugh will be cleaning my toilets (though I may need to get a bigger bathroom — I don’t think he’d fit).

Thanks to everyone for your great additions to this blog. If you want to talk amongst yourselves about this and other scary topics, visit the discussion forum I am (allegedly) moderating: What keeps you up at night?

And now for a chorus of “You Light Up My Life.” Come on, everybody, sing along.

Is the power grid melting down? Are we all just socialists now? And if so, where’s my bailout? Post your thoughts below or e-mail me: cringe@infoworld.com.