Californians conserved, power grid held Thursday
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Enough Californians shut off enough appliances to keep the state's power grid manager from calling an expected power emergency on Thursday, which would have forced some businesses to cut back, state officials said.
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With thousands of city residents facing their second week without power, some political leaders turned their focus to the utility they said was at fault in the outage.
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By Mark Schwanhausser, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep.
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By Rodney Foo, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 22--The family of a Santa Clara County firefighter who was electrocuted last year while battling a blaze at a Los Gatos home has filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against the property owners and PG&E.   Capt.
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Temperatures made a barely noticeable dip on the 11th day of 100-degree heat Wednesday, but the stress on California's electric grid eased slightly, as did the possibility of rolling blackouts.
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California wildfires created an electricity "island" of San Diego County on Wednesday as one major power transmission link to the U.S. West grid was shut and the other was flickering on and off, said San Diego Gas & Electric Co.
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By Kevin Howe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.  Dec. 15--SAN FRANCISCO -- A progressive increase in California American Water customers' bills was approved unanimously by the state Public Utilities Commission here Thursday.   Beginning Jan.
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SMA has an inverter that keeps the solar system going even during a blackout.
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More than 91,000 homes and businesses remained without power early Tuesday. Overnight temperatures in the state in the past week have dipped into the teens
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By Anna Kaplan, The Record, Stockton, Calif.  Feb. 10--Stockton churches wanting to play a role in a greener world now have a support network.   California Interfaith Power and Light is an organization that helps faith communities make their churches and homes more energy efficient.
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By Bruce Gerstman, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.  Sep.
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By Rob Varnon, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport  Feb. 10--STRATFORD -- About 45 people voted Thursday night at St. Joseph's National Catholic Church to give the Legislature three goals to help free the state from an electricity price crisis.
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Around 40,000 homes across California were without power Tuesday as searing temperatures roasted the region and drained the electricity grid, authorities said.
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New cybersecurity standards proposed by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to protect the nation's power infrastructure are not broad enough and fail to cover a significant number of interdependent assets.The standards also give electric utility owners, operators and users too much discretion when it comes to implementing the prescribed controls, a group of experts told members of the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science, and Technology on Wednesday.James Langevin (D-R.I.), chairman of the committee, said the NERC's proposed standards require stakeholders in the power grid to establish plans, protocols, and controls for safeguarding physical and electronic access to the control systems that manage the national's electric infrastructure.The problem is the standards are focused purely on the reliability of "bulk power systems" and don't require electric sector owners and operators to secure their generation systems, distribution systems, or telecommunication equipment, Langevin said in prepared testimony."We know from countless real-world examples that these units are highly vulnerable to intentional and unintentional cyber-events. Knocking any of these units off could affect the power supply to our nation's critical infrastructure," he noted in his statement.The narrow focus of NERC's proposed cybersecurity standards is especially troubling, Langevin said, in light of a recent simulated attack against a power utility control system that was carried out by Department of Homeland Security researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory. The same methods that were used in that experiment could be used to carry out attacks against larger generators and other equipment and cause "widespread and long-term damage to the electric infrastructure," he warned."I'll be blunt: If this administration doesn't recognize and prioritize these problems soon, the future isn't going to be pretty," Langevin said.Joseph Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, testified as an expert at the hearing. He said the growing interconnectedness of control systems with other networked computing systems is happening without a corresponding appreciation for the security risks resulting from such connectivity.For the most part, he stated in written testimony submitted to the committee, security issues have been the purview of the IT organizations within utility companies, whose control system groups manage grid and plant operations. As a result, it's often the case that some parts of the system are sensitized to security while others do not fully appreciate the risks, he said.Exacerbating this issue is the fact that many control system applications run in Windows and Unix environments and are therefore susceptible to the same security threats as other systems are. Traditional IT security controls, Weiss said, can help alleviate some of these issues, but they can also cause control system reliability problems.Against this backdrop, he said in his prepared remarks, the NERC's proposed standards are too narrowly focused on bulk power grid reliability, and not, for instance, on smaller substations that might support a major oil or gas pipeline in a remote locale. Similarly, there's not much priority given to securing the continuity of electricity to facilities such as municipal waterworks, manufacturing plants, refineries, hospitals and military installations.Experience has already shown the significant impact that an attack or a security incident against a control system can have on the electricity infrastructure, said Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the Government Accountability Office. Wilshusen provided written testimony to the committee.As examples, he cited a 2006 incident in which a foreign hacker planted malicious software capable of affecting a water treatment plant's operations, and another incident in which excessive traffic in a nuclear power plant's control system caused two circulation pumps to fail -- forcing the unit to be shut down manually.David Whiteley, executive vice president of the NERC, said that the security issues raised by the interconnectedness of the electric infrastructure and other infrastructures are important and need to be addressed. However, under its existing mandate, the NERC has the authority and responsibility for enforcing reliability standards on only the bulk power grid, not on the distribution system. Developing and enforcing standards on connected infrastructures is beyond the capability of a single body, he said.Whiteley said that in July of this year, the NERC sought comments from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on a proposal for approving eight CIP reliability standards. Those cybersecurity standards have been in development for several years and were developed with extensive input from industry experts.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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A utility worker was electrocuted Tuesday and another severely burned as crews tried to restore power to more than 150,000 homes and businesses that have been without air conditioning for nearly a week.
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Almost every morning, the whirr of the power generator sitting outside house No. 36 broke the quiet of the neat tree-lined street, bringing air conditioners and refrigerators on the block back to life. On Thursday, the generator stood silent.
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By Therese Poletti, Michelle Quinn and Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep.