NERC Conducts Biennial Grid Attack Exercise
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The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) recently conducted GridEx, which is an exercise held every 2 years to simulate response to a large-scale attack on the North American power grid.
This year, more than 250 companies and organizations participated in the 2-day event (which was followed by an executive tabletop session to delve into policy-level issues). A report detailing the event and its lessons learned is expected to be published in the 1Q 2024.
Overview of the GridEx Grid Attack Exercise
The 250 participants encompassed stakeholders from multiple sectors – electricity, natural gas, telecom and finance to name just a few. FERC also introduced a new vendor affiliate program to incorporate the participation of security and manufacturing companies as well. It was the seventh iteration of GridEx, and there are no signs of this event being cancelled any time in the near future.
The overall goals were to fine-tune utility response, measure communication effectiveness, and encourage cross-organization and cross-sector cooperation.
In addition to practicing local response, the grid attack exercise also allowed participants to coordinate regionally and across sectors on issues affecting interconnected generation, transmission and distribution systems. The drill also incorporated current events such as utility supply chain issues, physical security, cybersecurity, and terrorism.
All accounts say the exercise was extremely valuable. One interesting conclusion from the drill is that the COVID-19 pandemic may have actually served to improve organizations’ response efficiency and effectiveness because it forced the overall work-from-home infrastructure to evolve and improve. Simply put, enhanced remote work capabilities enable greater flexibility when dealing with a crisis, especially if navigation is difficult.
In the final analysis, GridEx is incredibly beneficial for the utility industry. Anything that can help get a plethora of stakeholders on the same page, while practicing and improving outage response, is critical. There’s no doubt about it – it’s never a bad idea to conduct a large-scale grid attack exercise!
