We’ve been warned: Hackers have the power to leave us in the dark | Guest Opinion

“Where were you when the lights went out?”

In the United States and other developed societies, transient power outages are a fact of life, but they usually are little more than an occasional inconvenience, albeit always with the possibility of serious consequences.

In modern societies, widespread access to affordable electricity is now a necessity and inarguably a huge asset. One of the greatest legacies of FDR’s New Deal was the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration, which improved the quality of life and agricultural efficiency in some of America’s poorest regions.

On the other hand, our nation’s increasing and absolute dependence on electricity — and the grid that supplies it — could also become our greatest liability if our nation’s enemies chose to attack the grid. To a large extent, for instance, our food supply now depends on keeping the power on.

For a glimpse of what life is like when enduring sustained nationwide outages, one need look no further than Ukraine, where families are shivering in the dark in the wake of Russia’s inhumane attacks on the electric grid.

However, as recent events have shown, no conventional weapons would be required to cause widespread power failures and nationwide paralysis if an emboldened enemy wanted to attack the United States.

Indeed, power industry experts have been warning about our electric grid’s vulnerability to several different kinds of threats. One of them was evident in 2021 when hackers seeking ransom shut down operations of the Colonial Pipeline Co, which supplies about half of the East Coast’s fuel supply.

Equally troubling were recent incidents in which unknown people attacked electrical substations. The Dec. 3 attack in Moore County, North Carolina, left 45,000 customers without power, while power company officials struggled to find replacement parts within a constrained supply chain.

In that incident, the saboteurs used readily available weapons, including AR-15s, to damage two substations.

The North Carolina outage could have been seen as an isolated incident were it not for the fact that four substations in the Tacoma, Washington, area were sabotaged during Christmas week. This added to the concern that someone may be probing our soft underbelly as a prelude to a larger attack.

Were these substations attacks harbingers of more to come or merely random acts of violence in this violent society? Investigators have yet to find out.

There are approximately 55,000 electrical transmission substations in the United States, so stationing armed guards around them 24/7 is simply not a viable option. Neither is it a viable option to replace the substations’ chain link fences with concrete walls — and there’s no reason to believe that would deter saboteurs.

What can we do? Many public utilities are already “hardening the grid” — mostly to fend off storm damage in hurricane-prone areas such as Florida. Now they may also need to think about ways to ward off sabotage.

In addition, the time has come for our nation to rethink its headlong rush to electric vehicles (EVs), the battery-powered vehicles that require access to electricity for recharging. A better option, now available from some manufacturers, is the hybrid-EV combo.

EVs and hybrids are both powered by batteries recharged by generators. With EVs, the generator is at a power plant that may well be many miles away. The advantage is that power plants can use eco-friendly energy sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric, while relying on fossil fuels only when those sources fall short.

EVs may also make sense for vehicle fleets that have access to backup power for recharging when the grid is out. However, EVs also have some serious drawbacks. For one thing, some energy is wasted — lost in transmission from the distant generating plants to the recharging stations that rely on the grid.

Moreover, under current battery technology, the time that motorists may have to spend at public recharging stations will likely exceed the time they now spend refueling their gas-powered vehicles.

Granted, EV owners may opt to install recharging outlets in their homes — unless, say, they live on the 26th floor of a condo whose parking garage, if any, lacks individual charging stations.

In contrast, owners of hybrid/EVs still have the option of recharging from the grid, but they also have their own personal generator in the form of a gas-powered internal combustion engine inside their vehicle.

Even so, California has acted to ban the sale of most gas-powered vehicles beginning in 2035, and 17 other states are poised to follow. In light of recent events, however, it’s time to rethink such mandates, given that a widespread power failure would shut down our society and also immobilize our vehicles right when they’re urgently needed to help restore the power.