MILWAUKEE — Most Wisconsinites know what it’s like to lose power during a severe weather event, but a community in North Carolina is left in the dark after a physical attack to its power grid.
Authorities in North Carolina say nearly 40,000 customers could be without power until Thursday after someone shot up two energy substations.
Let’s go in-depth on how We Energies keeps its portion of the power grid secure to prevent similar attacks from happening here.
Past a tall barbed wire security fence is one of We Energies’ many substations in southeastern Wisconsin.
"It's not even a place you'd want to play around in even if you know what you're doing,” We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway said.
Conway calls it a critical piece of infrastructure needed to provide power to the masses.
“We're not just serving your house and your computer, your wifi, we're also serving hospitals, police stations, fire departments, and government facilities,” he said.
Conway says substations take high-voltage power and lower it so it can be sent down power lines to serve customers.
But as seen over the weekend in North Carolina, substations can become vulnerable targets of physical attacks due to their visibility outdoors. Law enforcement says all it took was a person firing several gunshots to shut it down for days.
“Is there anything particular to this infrastructure that could prevent a similar shooting from happening here?” TMJ4 asked.
"What we don't want to do is talk about specific policies, procedures, security measures we have in place,” Conway said. “You would say that obviously someone could get lucky, someone could be targeted to do something. So that's why we have this multi-pronged approach."
Conway says We Energies’ infrastructure not only has perimeter security and 24-hour surveillance, but the company also partners with law enforcement and has specially trained employees who focus on preventing cyber and physical attacks.
"Physical attacks on the grid happen,” said UW-Madison electrical engineering professor Line Roald. “Unfortunately, a really bad physical attack is what we see by Russia in Ukraine right now."
Roald says cyber attacks often happen from afar and can take larger portions of a power grid offline. But she says those attacks are often resolved quickly once the source is identified because there’s no physical damage to infrastructure.
"When we are looking at actual physical attacks to the grid, there is a need to actually put the new equipment and that can take time, it can be very costly, and so the recovery process from a cyber attack and a physical attack is quite different,” she said.
Back at the We Energies substation, Conway says those who are caught even planning to knock out power through an attack face serious consequences.
"It's a significant crime and I certainly know in North Carolina, they're looking into it and we're always on heightened alert, but we are aware of the situation and I think working with our local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, there's just a heightened sense across the country,” he said.
Earlier this year, an Oshkosh man pleaded guilty to plotting an attack on the U.S. power grid with two other men, each of whom face up to 15 years in federal prison.
