as it pertains to the critical infrastructure. The organization should, in conjunction with the local utility’s input, assess the utility’s SAIFI, CAIDI, and MAIFI for both the utility’s service territory as well as for the local distribution circuit supplying power to that business. Once these historical reliability metrics are known, the organization can plan for the likeliest and most feasible outage scenarios (many sustained interruptions but few momentary outages, long utility repair times, etc.) As mentioned previously, to address human risk factors, SOP’s, EAP’s, and ARP’s need to be available at a moment’s notice so trained personnel can respond with situational awareness and confidence.
Many companies use web‐based information management systems to address human risk factors. A living web‐based document system can produce a “database” of perpetually refreshed knowledge, providing the level of granularity necessary to operate, maintain, and repair mission critical infrastructure. Keeping the ever‐changing documents current and secure can then be easily addressed each time a capital project is completed, or an infrastructure change is made. One such program is SmartWALK®– a web‐based document portal shown in Figure 2.10. It is important to secure this critical infrastructure knowledge and also leverage this asset for employee training and succession planning.
Figure 2.6 Solar Flare.
Source: ESA/NASA/SOHO.
Figure 2.7 EMP Waveform – MIL‐STD‐461G Test Method RS105
(Source: Courtesy of Retlif Testing Laboratories).
Figure 2.8 RS105 Transient Generator and Transmission Line
(Courtesy of Retlif Testing Laboratories).
Figure 2.9 Damped Sinusoidal Transient – MIL‐STD‐461G Test Method CS1116
(Source: Courtesy of Retlif Testing Laboratories).
Figure 2.10 SmartWALK™ mobile device
(Courtesy of PMC Group One, LLC)
Figure 2.11 The Smart Grid Network and its features.
Events such as the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the 2006 Hurricane season, and the outages in Italy and Greece in 2003 and 2004, respectively, which left many millions without power, have emphasized our interdependencies with other critical infrastructures—most notably telecommunications. There are numerous strategies and sector‐specific plans such as Basel II, US Patriot Act, SOX and, NFPA 1600, all of which highlight the responsibility of the private sector for increasing resiliency and redundancy in business processes and systems. These events have also prompted the revision of laws, regulations, and policies governing the reliability and resiliency of the power industry. Some of these measures also delineate controls required of some critical infrastructure sectors to maintain business‐critical operations during a critical event (please see Appendix A for further information).
The unintended consequence of identifying vulnerabilities is the fact that such diligence can actually invite attacks tailored to take advantage of them. In order to avoid this, one must anticipate the vulnerabilities created by responses to the existing ones. New and better technologies for energy supply and efficient end‐use will clearly be required if the daunting challenges of the decades ahead are to be adequately addressed.
In 2000, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) launched a consortium dedicated to improving electric power reliability for the new digital economy. Participants in this endeavor, known as the Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society or CEIDS, include power providers and a broad spectrum of electric reliability stakeholders. Participation in CEIDS is also open to digital equipment manufacturers, companies whose productivity depends on a highly reliable electricity supply, and industry trade associations.
According to EPRI, CEIDS (now known as IntelliGrid) represents the second phase of a bold, two‐phase national effort to improve overall power system reliability. The first phase of the plan, called the Power Delivery Reliability Initiative, launched in early 2000, brought together more than twenty North American electric utilities as well as several trade associations to make immediate and clearly necessary improvements to utility transmission and distribution systems. In the second phase, CEIDS addresses, more specifically, the growing demand for “digital quality” electricity.
“Unless the needs of diverse market segments are met through a combination of power delivery and end‐use technologies, U.S. productivity growth and prosperity will increasingly be constrained,” explains Karl Stahlkopf, a former Vice President of Power Delivery at EPRI. “It’s important that CEIDS study the impact of reliability on a wide spectrum of industries and determine the level of reliability each requires.”
Specifically, CEIDS focuses on three reliability goals:
1 Preparing high‐voltage transmission networks for the increased capacity and enhanced reliability needed to support a stable wholesale power market.
2 Determining how distribution systems can best integrate low‐cost power from the transmission system with an increasing number of distributed generation and storage options.
3 Analyzing ways to provide digital equipment, such as computers and network interfaces, with an appropriate level of built‐in protection.
It is only through these wide‐reaching efforts to involve all industry constituencies that the industry can raise the bar with respect to protective measures and knowledge sharing.
2.5 Use of Distributed Energy Resources and Generation
The way electricity was produced before the advent of our modern electric grid has received renewed interest over the past couple of decades. Unlike the large centralized power plants located at the top tier of our electric grid, much smaller distributed generation (DG) systems are now being deployed at the bottom tier, typically installed on‐site by the end electric user. This trend is spurred on by growing concern over our aging electric infrastructure, widespread outages like what occurred in 2003, customer desire to have an alternative to their grid electric supply, and environmental impact. Some new technologies, such as fuel cells and microturbines that have much lower emissions than fossil‐fuel central power plants, are being used on‐site for a wide variety of applications. Other “green” renewable technologies, including solar and wind, are also becoming more widely applied as distributed resources (DR). They are helped financially by an assortment of federal, state, and utility incentives that provide various grants, rebates or tax benefits to help justify the installation. Some generalizations that favor DG include:
1 Since most DG is of relatively small scale, it is more modular and can be sized to match a facility’s base load, sized to just supplement the grid supply, or in cogeneration applications, sized