Talk:Electrical grid security in the United States

The meaning of "security" in the context of the electricity grid

Reading the Wikipedia article about the Electricity Security and Affordability Act, I get the impression that the word security means vastly different things to different people. The current state of this article suggests it is about incidents of sabotage of electricity infrastructure and measures to prevent it, which is a much smaller topic than making the electricity grid resilient to harmful phenomena (including sabotage events) and protecting the grid from harm, while maintaining security of supply. The electricity grid is, perhaps, the largest connected structure on the planet and, due to its size, is exposed to natural phenomena of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin. It needs to withstand rain, wind, lightning strikes and solar storms, all of which can affect the security of supply to a much greater extent and more often than the occasional instance of sabotage. Don't get me wrong, this subject is a notable one, but I wonder if the current contents of this article even scratch the surface of the topic. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:23, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

"but I wonder if the current contents of this article even scratch the surface of the topic"

I feel highly confident that the current state does not scratch the surface. But I'm an eventualist, so that's OK by me in the general sense. More will come as people discover the topic and contribute to it.

That said, when I created this I intentionally put "in the United States" to at least constrain the scope a little bit. But I agree that there are other topics beyond intentional vandalism / sabotage that could fall under this rubric. Not sure about the best way to approach that though. Perhaps this article could be renamed to narrow its scope even more explicitly? "Electrical Grid sabotage in the United States"? Or maybe it just needs to be expanded to include additional aspects of security? Or maybe it's fine like it is and those other things should be in an article titled something like "Electrical Grid resiliency in the United States"? I dunno. But if somebody has a good idea I'm willing to help implement whatever. Sprhodes (talk) 04:00, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I quite like the title, as it gives the article a lot of scope to develop. If it were called something more specific, then that would be limiting. While this article is, currently, little more than a list of event of Sabotage of electrical infrastructure in the United States, and would appear to have been created as a response to the December 3, 2022 Moore County substation attacks, I think this is merely a straw-man of an article. Although the word grid is mentioned numerous times in the news sources, and in a couple of places in the article, it seem to be used as an easy (or jargon) way to say infrastructure in headlines. The concept of what the "grid" is, as a network of electrically interconnected items of infrastructure, has not been explained. I suspect neither the FBI nor Homeland Security fully understand what the electricity grid is, either, when they talk about it's security. In engineering terms, grid security is about maintaining the electricity supply even when some part of the infrastructure inevitably fails, for whatever reason. When compared to what is currently happening in Ukraine, somebody taking pot-shots at electricity transformers and substation plant is merely annoying, but won't bring the country to its knees. However, a geomagnetic storm might. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 11:11, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Refactor this page to be more compatible with the existing "Electric_grid_security" page.

I somehow was not aware of the Electric grid security page when I created this, or I might have just added this as information as part of that page. But now that both exist, it seems like some restructuring might be in order. A couple of ideas come to mind:

1. Outright merge this page into that page and not have this page anymore 2. Keep this page more or less as it is, refactor the other page to be more globally oriented, and link from that page to this page in a subsection that is related by either geography or the topic of sabotage (which is mainly what is covered here) 3. Rename this page "Electrical grid sabotage in the United States" and link it from the appropriate place on the other page

Or "other" I guess. Thoughts? Sprhodes (talk) 02:54, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

(That page has been renamed/moved to: Electric grid security in the United States - same name as this one but without the "al".) My suggestion is similar to 2. - Rename this page to List of electrical grid incidents/sabotage/attacks in the US, and maybe move some paragraph content into that one. Not sure what the best name for this one would be...incidents? That would cover accidents as well as attacks. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:41, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

@Reywas92: (who moved the other page and works on electrical articles)...Do you have any inputs/ideas? ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:44, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh I didn't realize there was another article on the topic! I just saw the "Electric" article had Template:Globalize on it an thought it might make sense to just narrow the title rather than assume it could be adequately expanded in scope. I think option 1 of merging both to a single article with a name that matches Electrical grid would make the most sense. The shooting incidents aren't as directly related to cybersecurity though, but neither article is so long that they have to be separate either. A global perspective on grid security is important, but with the sources pretty much all being US-focused, that might be hard. Reywas92^Talk 00:46, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

To an electrical engineer, the security of the Electricity Grid is a much larger topic than a few vandals taking potshots at some substations. What this article covers, at the moment, and with the support of sources, concerns Electrical sub-station security in the United States. Unfortunately, both Homeland Security and the reporting journalists are not electrical engineers and have used the term grid when they are really talking about protecting and securing both the physical and cybernetic access to electrical sub-stations and related infrastructure from human vandalism and sabotage, not natural events. Natural events like lightning strikes, or geomagnetic storms can have major and widespread impacts on an electricity grid, so are important (electricity grid) security considerations when designing and operating electricity infrastructure. A single network event can cause the shut down a whole electricity network, if grid security fails. However, the electrical infrastructure in the United States also appears to be vulnerable to vandalism and sabotage, and current security measures, such as gates, fences and padlocks are proving inadequate security measures from some individuals, who have malicious intent. This seem confined to particular countries, such as the United States and Ukraine. What these incidents haven't done in the United States is bring down the electricity grid. (In Ukraine, it is a different story.) These criminal acts have only affected a few (thousand) consumers connected to the individual substations, not shut down electric power grid to large areas of North America, like some natural phenomena could do. Please give this article a sensible name like Attacks on electrical substations in the United States. WP:SPADE applies. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:40, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Electric grid security in the United States with Electrical grid security in the United States

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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...these are the same topic. Electric grid redirects to Electrical grid. I don't know which title the article should be kept under (probably the Electrical grid one, given the parent article is at Electrical grid), and they both could use some cleanup, but there shouldn't be a content fork here. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 04:15, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support, Skarmory appears to be right that we have two articles on the same subject. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Support per my comment above Reywas92^Talk 13:44, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Comment "Grid security" has two very different meanings: (1) physical security (like protecting against terrorism) and (2) resistance to unexpected contingencies (cf. Security (electrical grid)). For example, the issue for #1 is building good fences around the existing generators, while for #2 the issue is having enough generators ready to run at any point in time. See also a detailed explanation in the previous section by Cameron Dewe. As-is, the Electrical grid security in the United States deals with #1, while Electric grid security in the United States mostly with #2, although without directly spelling anything concrete. Before merging, it is important to agree on whether the merged article will cover #1, #2, or both. Note that an alternative is to clearly dedicate each article to its own topic. --Викидим (talk) 19:10, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

I think we should change the names of the articles to more properly reflect what they cover, per Wikidemus and Cameron Dewe's comments above. Despite having similar titles these are on distinct if interconnected concepts. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Support merge as initially proposed. My reading it at both article focus on (1) with a discussion or contingencies (2; such as smart grid), and that these two topics are best discussed together, in part because both articles are relatively short - a combined article would be clear for readers than having the content split. Anything that wasn't US-specific could of course be moved to Power system reliability. Klbrain (talk) 16:24, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Support merge as initially proposed, both articles are about the state of security of the U.S. electrical grid, one just happens to mostly collate incidents and the other is a higher level overview.

Arcade Wise (they/them) (talk) 05:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sources

The main problem with this (and adjacent) article lies in the choice of sources. The topic of security of the electrical grid is not news and thus should not be described based on the mass media. There is a myriad of first-rate scientific articles and monographs that can be relied upon. Almost all journalists are not professionals in the subjects they cover, and should not be relied upon when the topic is of any meaningful complexity. Викидим (talk) 19:33, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Electrical grid security in the United States into Power system reliability

There is no reason to only cover the United States. I know power system reliability doesn't cover physical security, but it should. 134.215.176.89 (talk) 21:48, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Dear colleague, see the discussion above. In the real world, building enough generators and protecting them from being blown up are certainly related. However, these processes are operated by different groups of people, AFAIK, on very different timescales. No amount of fences or guards will prevent a blackout if there is not enough reserve capacity to begin with. For the avoidance of doubt, this comment is related to your "should". I have no position on the merge of the articles in their current state, but think that physical security and the grid security in the traditional sense belong in separate articles. Викидим (talk) 22:56, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Disagree per reasons presented in past merge discussion. Per-country splits are perfectly reasonable provided that the sources cover it like that - every country has a different power grid, so of course they do. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)