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EXAMINING VULNERABILITIES OF 

AMERICA’S POWER SUPPLY 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT & 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

September 10, 2015 

Serial No. 114–37 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

HON. BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia, Chair 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DON BEYER, Virginia 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

September 10, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Barry Loudermilk, Chairman, Subcommittee 

on Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House 

of Representatives ................................................................................................ 8 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8 

Statement by Representative Don Beyer, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 9 

Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

Statement by Representative Alan Grayson, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 11 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11 

Witnesses: 

Mr. Richard Lordan, Senior Technical Executive, Power Delivery & Utilization Sector, Electric Power Research Institute 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 12 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 14 

Ms. Nadya Bartol, Vice President of Industry Affairs and Cybersecurity Strategist, Utilities Telecom Council 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 19 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 21 

Dr. Daniel Baker, Distinguished Professor of Planetary & Space Physics; 

Moog-BRE Endowed Chair of Space Sciences; Director, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 29 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 31 

Dr. M. Granger Morgan, Hamerschlag University Professor, Departments 

of Engineering and Public Policy and of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 36 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 38 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 48 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Mr. Richard Lordan, Senior Technical Executive, Power Delivery & Utilization Sector, Electric Power Research Institute .................................................. 68 
Page

IV 

Ms. Nadya Bartol, Vice President of Industry Affairs and Cybersecurity Strategist, Utilities Telecom Council .......................................................................... 76 

Dr. Daniel Baker, Distinguished Professor of Planetary & Space Physics; 

Moog-BRE Endowed Chair of Space Sciences; Director, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder ....................... 86 

Dr. M. Granger Morgan, Hamerschlag University Professor, Departments 

of Engineering and Public Policy and of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University ......................................................................... 91 

Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record 

Statement for the record titled ‘‘Texas is Working to Protect the Electrical 

Grid Against Natural or Man-Made Electromagnetic Pulse,’’ submitted by 

Lieutenant Colonel Allen B. West (U.S. Army, Ret), President and Chief 

Executive Officer, National Center for Policy Analysis .................................... 96 
(1) 

EXAMINING VULNERABILITIES OF 

AMERICA’S POWER SUPPLY 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT & 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barry Loudermilk 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight] presiding. 
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Chairman LOUDERMILK. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Energy will come to order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess of the 

Subcommittee at any time. 

Good morning. I would like to thank our witnesses for being here 

today. I appreciate the witnesses’ patience and understanding as 

we had to postpone this hearing from July. And I look forward to 

the testimony today that will help us examine the vulnerabilities 

of America’s power supply. 

Welcome to today’s joint subcommittee hearing entitled ‘‘Examining the Vulnerabilities of America’s Power Supply.’’ Due to time 

constraints and in the interest of allowing our witnesses to be 

heard and their questions answered, I will submit my opening 

statement for the record and I encourage others to do so as well. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Loudermilk follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF OVERSIGHT SUBCOMMITTEE

CHAIRMAN BARRY LOUDERMILK

Good morning. I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today to help 

us examine the vulnerabilities of America’s power supply. 

The electricity infrastructure of the United States is aging, and the electric power 

industry is in the process of modernizing it with its transformation to the ‘‘smart 

grid’’ —the technology that provides an increased use of digital information and control technology to improve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid. 

That process of modernization, however, introduces new vulnerabilities in addition to ones that have existed for over a century. This hearing will discuss those 

various threats to the national electric grid, including: severe weather or other natural events; cyber, physical, or coordinated attacks; space weather; and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. 

The blackout that darkened the Northeast in the summer of 2003 opened many 

eyes to the vulnerability and age of our electrical system. In that case, a tree branch 

in Ohio coupled with software issues and human error left many in the dark for 

two days. In addition to natural events like this and Superstorm Sandy—which left 

millions of people without power, man-made physical threats exist. 

In 2013, unknown attackers coordinated an attack on a Pacific Gas & Electric 

Metcalf substation in California. Those attackers severed six underground fiber 

optic lines and fired over 100 rounds of ammunition at transformers. While the attack did not lead to any loss of power or life, it caused over $15 million in damage. 

The President and CEO of the American Public Power Association stated at a hearing last year that, ‘‘shooting at substations, unfortunately, is not uncommon.’’ 

Just as troubling is the amount of attempted cyber-attacks to the nation’s electric 

grid. An investigation completed by USA Today earlier this year found that the 

United States’ power grid ‘‘faces physical or online attacks approximately ‘once 

every four days.’’’ In addition, in 2014, the National Security Agency (NSA) reported 

that it had tracked intrusions into industrial control systems by entities with the 

technical capability ‘‘to take down control systems that operate U.S. power grids, 

water systems, and other critical infrastructure.’’ We have also been examining 

cyber threats in the Homeland Security Committee, and this is an absolutely critical 

issue that must be taken seriously by Congress and the entire federal government. 

On top of these threats, we also have the potential threat of an electromagnetic 

pulse, which would disrupt or destroy electronic equipment after the detonation of 

a nuclear weapon. Geomagnetic disturbances can also be brought on by naturally 

occurring solar weather events, such as in 1989 when a geomagnetic disturbance 

caused millions of Canadians to lose their power for about nine hours. 

It is clear that there are many threats to our electric infrastructure, and we must 

therefore ensure that our federal systems are adequately protected, especially as we 

transition to the ‘‘smart grid.’’ We need to rethink how we protect our facilities from 

physical attacks, like the Metcalf incident where investigators were never even able 

to identify the criminals. 

In addition, as we have seen over the past few years, cybersecurity is an everevolving threat. The fact that we know of intrusions by entities with the capability 

to take down our control systems means that we must do everything in our power 
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to be proactive rather than reactive in order to protect our grid and prevent such 

a take-down from happening. 

Mitigating these vulnerabilities and their potential consequences is ultimately essential for the safety and security of all Americans. Protecting our power supply is 

something that is crucial for day to day life activities and things that we take for 

granted—like heating and cooling a home or powering a business—as well as ensuring our national security. 

I look forward to today’s hearing, where I hope to learn more about the various 

vulnerabilities of our grid as well as the extent of the threats that could potentially 

leave us in the dark. 

Thank you. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. I now recognize the Ranking Member of 

the Oversight Subcommittee, the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 

Beyer, for an opening statement. 

Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, respecting your fine example, I will 

also submit mine for the record. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Beyer follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF OVERSIGHT SUBCOMMITTEE

MINORITY RANKING MINORITY MEMBER DON BEYER

Thank you Chairmen Loudermilk and Weber for holding this important hearing 

today. 

In September 1882 Thomas Edison flipped a switch that enabled the electricity 

generated from the Pearl Street power plant in lower Manhattan to power on 400 

light bulbs for 82 customers living in a one-quarter square mile radius of each other, 

including 52 light bulbs at the New York Times. The electric grid was born and 

blossomed quickly, spreading across the country and around the world. Today the 

U.S. power grid is an intricate labyrinth of 200,000 miles of transmission lines, 

thousands of generating stations and hundreds of high voltage transformers. 

This complex and interconnected power system fuels our national and global economy. It plays a key role in our national security. It enables the delivery of critical 

healthcare services. It improves our lifestyles in a multitude of ways, and provides 

emergency services that save lives. When the electric grid goes down today it is 

more than a passing inconvenience. The elderly and very young alike may die from 

a lack of access to critical medical services or availability of adequate heating or air 

conditioning. Police, fire and emergency response capabilities may be hindered. 

Businesses close. Grocery stores and gas stations may cease to open or operate. Hospitals may be unable to fully function effectively. 

At the same time we have witnessed more and more severe weather events in the 

past few years that have disabled the grid, knocking down transmission lines and 

utility poles, flooding critical equipment and leaving customers without access to 

this critically important service for days on end. Reliant on the telecommunications 

infrastructure to operate and computer control systems to function the power grid 

has also become vulnerable to malicious cyber threats. Recent physical attacks on 

electrical power stations have highlighted the need to harden the grid against these 

kinds of threats. A successful, coordinated cyber and physical assault against key 

portions of the grid could leave cities or regions without power for long stretches 

of time. Geomagnetic Disturbances (GMDs), producing solar flares, can also disable 

portions of the grid and interfere with global navigation and communication systems. Electromagnetic Pulses (EMPs) intentionally produced by a weapon is one of 

the least likely, but most serious, threats to the power grid since its successful use 

would destroy critical electronic components that are vital for the grid’s continued 

performance and could be difficult to replace quickly. 

Protecting the power grid against all of these variables and potential 

vulnerabilities is not a problem that can be, or should be, faced by the utility industry alone. The government has a key role to play in ensuring that our shared reliance on electricity is as resilient as possible. The electric industry and federal government also need to have detailed plans for recovery operations if, or when, the 

electrical grid is degraded by natural disasters or intentionally disabled by malicious 

actors. 

How we confront these multiple vulnerabilities and emerging threats is not 

straight-forward. There is no silver bullet to eradicating these threats. There is no 

cure-all for ensuring that the electric grid will never go down. It will—at times— 

as we have seen most recently due to the power of natural storms and the fragility 
10 

of our aging electrical infrastructure. Ensuring that we are prepared to recover from 

these potential events in a timely manner and able to restore power to critical facilities, such as hospitals, quickly demands our collective attention, from industry, the 

Administration and Congress. 

Because I believe it is critically important that we are as prepared as possible to 

effectively deal with these potential incidents when they occur I asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate these issues in a letter I sent to 

GAO yesterday. I would welcome other Members who are interested—on both sides 

of the aisle—to join me in this request. This is an important, non-partisan issue, 

and I am glad we are holding this hearing today. 

I look forward to learning more about these important issues from our witnesses 

and hearing about any recommended actions they have to help keep the lights on 

as long as possible and get them back on as quickly as possible should they go out— 

regardless of the reason why. 

I yield back. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. I appreciate that. 

Now, I recognize the Chairman of the Energy Subcommittee, the 

gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber, for an opening statement. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you. My opening statement is that I submit 

my opening statement for the record. Welcome. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

CHAIRMAN RANDY K. WEBER

Good morning and welcome to today’s joint Oversight and Energy Subcommittee 

hearing examining vulnerabilities of America’s power supply. Today, we will hear 

from a broad range of witnesses on the existing threats to the nation’s electric grid, 

and the impact that potential attacks and incidents could have on our grid reliability and national security. 

Our witnesses today will also provide insight into how industry and the federal 

government can work together to harden our electric grid against ongoing and 

changing threats. 

The reliability of America’s power grid is one of our greatest economic strengths. 

In my home state of Texas, reliable and affordable power serves a population that 

is increasing by more than 1,000 people per day, and provides power to the energy 

intensive industries that drive consumption. Texas is by far the nation’s largest consumer of electricity. Keeping the Texas power grid reliable and secure is key to continuing this economic growth. 

But it is common knowledge that utilities face significant and diverse threats to 

the reliability of power delivery. Our electric grid is vulnerable to physical threats 

caused by damage to existing infrastructure and growing cybersecurity threats as 

the grid is modernized. 

Key infrastructure such as utility substations are often left completely exposed, 

with little more than a chain-link fence protecting the facilities that keep the lights 

on across the country. Small scale cyber and physical attacks to our electric grid 

are estimated to occur once every four days. And in over 300 cases of significant 

cyber and physical attacks since 2011, suspects have never been identified. 

Our power grid is also at risk from geomagnetic disturbances, which can be 

caused by space weather or an Electromagnetic Pulse, commonly known as E-M-P, 

which could be generated in a nuclear attack. These high energy pulses could severely impact the operation of the electric grid and electric power systems across 

the country, disabling and damaging equipment essential to providing reliable 

power that could be nearly impossible to replace on a large scale. 

We often think of cybersecurity and other threats to the power grid at a macro 

scale, but these types of attacks can occur even at the local level. In 2011, the 

Pedernales Electric Co-op, a non-profit co-op that serves approximately 200,000 customers north of San Antonio, was struck by a cyberattack. While the attack thankfully did not disrupt electric reliability, it is a stark reminder that threats to the 

grid are real, and are not going away. 

Our nation’s power supply cannot be protected overnight, particularly as utilities 

struggle to adapt technology to manage a growing number of cybersecurity threats. 

Cyber threats to the power grid will continue to evolve, particularly as more interconnected smart technologies are incorporated into the electric grid. As protective 
11 

technology improves, so does the capability and creativity of those conducting attacks. 

While we cannot predict every method of attack, the federal government can and 

should play a role in assisting industry with developing new technology and security 

safeguards. 

Accordingly, research and development efforts at the Department of Energy are 

focused on providing industry with comprehensive tools to conduct internal analysis 

to identify and address cybersecurity weaknesses so that industry can take the lead 

in addressing these vulnerabilities. 

I want to thank our witnesses for testifying before the Committee today, and I 

look forward to a discussion about the threats to America’s reliable power supply 

and the federal government’s role in helping to secure our electric grid. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Chairman Weber. 

I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on 

Energy, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Grayson, for an opening 

statement. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Ditto. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grayson follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

MINORITY RANKING MEMBER ALAN GRAYSON

Thank you, Chairman Loudermilk, and Chairman Weber, for holding this hearing 

today. Today’s hearing is focused on our nation’s electric grid, and the many threats 

facing it.We as a society are increasingly dependent on the services electricity provides, and the electric grid has quietly become the basis of our modern lives. However, our electrical system is under constant stress from severe weather, malicious 

acts, and age. The stress on the system is constantly increasing as we dramatically 

change how we want to use the grid now, verses what it was designed to do, when 

it was built. 

In 2000, the US experienced an average of 2.5 grid disruption events a month. 

Fourteen years later, in the first half of 2014, we had an average of 21.7 disruptions 

a month - a nearly nine-fold increase. 

Between 2003 and 2012, 80 percent of all outages were weather related and cost 

the US economy an inflation-adjusted annual average of between $18 billion to $33 

billion. 

USA Today recently reported that physical and cyber attacks on the power grid 

occur about once every four days. In April of 2013, unknown snipers disabled 17 

transformers with a .30 caliber assault rifle at the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s 

Metcalf substation outside of San Jose, California. The assailants fired 150 rounds 

and escaped undetected. They had cut a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables prior to the attack hindering communication. 

From malware inserted in electrical components used to operate the power grid 

prior to purchase by utilities to traditional cyber attacks, disabling even a portion 

of the nation’s power supply can have serious consequences for the health and safety 

of our citizens. 

Keep in mind, that the average age of a high voltage transformer in the United 

States is approximately 38 to 40 years old, with 70 percent of them 25 years or 

older. And that most high voltage transformers are custom built, and can take five 

to twenty months to design, build, deliver and install. 

One of our challenges is grappling with the reality that many of these threats to 

the grid are not easily predicted with current capabilities. 

High-impact low probability events are by definition, rare. We do not know when 

a large-scale malicious attack might happen, whether it’s an electromagnetic pulse 

or a cyber attack. We have limited abilities to predict when a geomagnetic disturbance or extreme weather event will hit. And since these events rarely happen, we 

have little or no historical data to guide us. 

While we should certainly support efforts to significantly improve our grid security capabilities, we cannot assume that it is even possible to completely protect the 

grid from every possible risk. 

What we can do is increase our ability to estimate these risks. We can improve 

our ability to predict the impacts, even when we may not be able to predict the actual event. And we can take actions to improve our electric system’s ability to withstand an event, and minimize the time it takes to recover from that event. 
12 

This Committee has an important responsibility to authorize research that can 

dramatically improve the ability of the grid to handle whatever comes at it. 

Over the past 100 years we have incrementally created our electric grid, adding 

and subtracting equipment as the system expanded and became more interconnected. Our electrical system is considered one of the greatest engineering 

achievements of the 20th century by the National Academy of Engineering. We 

should be proud of this accomplishment. 

I look forward to working with my colleagues to identify and fund the research 

efforts needed to make sure our electrical system remains a great achievement. 

I thank each of our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to hearing 

what each of you has to say. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back my remaining time. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Mr. Grayson. 

And is Ms. Johnson not here? Okay. 

At this time I would like to introduce our witnesses. You don’t 

have the option, okay, so—we wouldn’t get anywhere if you guys 

follow suit, so we did this so you would have plenty of time. 

Our first witness is Richard Lordan. He is the Senior Technical 

Executive of the Power Delivery & Utilization Sector at the Electric 

Power Research Institute. 

Our next witness is Ms. Nadya Bartol—is the Vice President of 

Industry Affairs and Cybersecurity Strategist at Utilities Telecom 

Council where she works on UTC cybersecurity initiatives worldwide. 

Our next witness is Dr. Daniel Baker. He is the Director of the 

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of 

Colorado Boulder. He is a distinguished professor of planetary and 

space physics and the Moog-BRE. Is that proper? Okay. Endowed 

Chair of Space Sciences at the university. 

And our final witness is Dr. M. Granger Morgan. He is the 

Hamerschlag University Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where he is 

also professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

Thank you all for being here and I now recognize Mr. Lordan for 

five minutes to present his testimony. 

MR. RICHARD LORDAN, SENIOR TECHNICAL EXECUTIVE, 

POWER DELIVERY & UTILIZATION SECTOR, 

ELECTRIC POWER RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. LORDAN. Good morning, Chairman Weber and Mr. 

Loudermilk, Vice Chairman Knight and Johnson, Ranking Members Mr. Beyer, and members of the subcommittees. I am Richard 

Lordan, Senior Technical Executive at EPRI Transmission. I’m 

pleased to testify today on vulnerabilities of the electric grid. 

For those of you who don’t know, EPRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit 

organization that conducts research and development relating to 

generation, delivery, and use of electricity for the benefit of the 

public. EPRI’s members represent approximately 90 percent of the 

electricity generated and delivered in the United States. International participation extends to over 30 countries. 

So my testimony is going to be kind of in two parts. One is on 

the general vulnerability of the grid and then I’m going to bore 

down on one threat which is electromagnetic pulse. 

When I talk about the vulnerability of the grid, I’m really talking 

about vulnerability to high-impact, low-frequency events. They 
13 

called them HILF events, and they are rare but they have a high 

impact. And some of these things include natural events like severe 

weather, earthquakes, geomagnetic disturbances, and also manmade threats like physical security and EMP, which I’m going to 

talk about today. 

So you asked about the vulnerability of the grid, and there are 

inherent vulnerabilities in the grid to these threats because the severity is generally higher than the design basis for the system. To 

completely eliminate these vulnerabilities would be cost prohibitive. It would defeat the industry’s objective of providing reliable, 

safe, environmentally acceptable, and affordable power. 

EPRI supports a prudent approach where you assess the 

vulnerabilities from all of these threats, calculate the impact 

should these events occur, and develop cost-effective countermeasures that improve transmission system resiliency. 

I’m now going to talk about EMP with a comparison to geomagnetic disturbance. EMP and GMD are often conflated but there 

are important differences that I’ll highlight. Dr. Baker could probably add some more. EMP, electromagnetic pulse, refers to a very 

intense pulse of electromagnetic energy typically caused by the detonation of a nuclear device or other high-energy explosive device. 

There are three stages of an EMP and I’m pretty sure you know 

what they are but I’ll do it again: E1, E2, and E3. The E1 is characterized by an incredibly fast rise time high-energy pulse. It has 

the ability to destroy electronics in the power system, and it affects 

itself by the electric field itself or by coupling to wires that are attached to these devices. 

The E2 is similar to lightning and consequently can result in 

damage to electronics and potential flashover of distribution class 

insulation. 

E3 is characterized by a longer duration, low-frequency content 

similar to GMD, and that’s why people talk about EMP and GMD 

together. But the E3 part of EMP is much shorter than a GMD, 

and therefore, it will not have the consequence of transformer overheating and failure. It does have the ability to saturate transformers and transformers will create harmonics. They’ll consume 

reactive power and there may be voltage collapse on the system. 

With regard to risk management of these threats, so we talked 

about EMP and vulnerability. EPRI is leading an effort with the 

industry to characterize each of these threats, whether it’s EMP, 

GMD, physical security or cyber, characterize the threat, then identify the key component—key components in the system and understand the vulnerability of those components, then assess the impact 

should this event happen. What’s the effect on the system and 

what’s the societal cost? Then we develop and assess mitigation 

strategies that will buy down that risk. 

And lastly, after we’ve done all the different threats one by one, 

we support looking sideways and seeing, hey, are there any mitigation strategies that also support multiple threat that would improve your business case by increasing transmission resiliency? 

So thank you again for inviting EPRI here today and I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lordan follows:] 
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Chairman LOUDERMILK. I now recognize Ms. Bartol for five minutes to present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MS. NADYA BARTOL, 

VICE PRESIDENT OF INDUSTRY AFFAIRS 

AND CYBERSECURITY STRATEGIST, 

UTILITIES TELECOM COUNCIL 

Ms. BARTOL. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and Members of the 

Subcommittee. My name is Nadya Bartol. I’m the Vice President 

of Industry Affairs and Cybersecurity Strategist at the Utilities 

Telecom Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today 

about the vulnerabilities of America’s power supply. 

UTC is a global trade association for the communications and information technology interest of electric, gas, and water utilities; 

pipeline companies; and other critical infrastructure industries. 

Cybersecurity is a serious concern with respect to great vulnerability. It is a complex challenge that requires comprehensive process-driven solutions. It is and will remain a risk we must actively 

manage as long as society wants to have the conveniences of a 

modern world increasingly underpinned and enabled by smart 

interconnected technologies. 

Some of the variables in the complex cybersecurity grid vulnerability landscape are outside of our span of control. Although there 

are a number of variables within our control, there’s no easy way 

to fix them either, as mitigating those variables to an acceptable 

level may take a long time. 

With respect to what is outside of our span of control, the grid 

is vulnerable to a variety of threats, including individual hackers, 

activist groups, cyber criminals, and nation states. 

With respect to what is within our span of control, those 

vulnerabilities are related to the shortage of qualified cybersecurity 

workforce, age of legacy infrastructure, lack of legal framework for 

information sharing, and evolving practices for assuring security in 

supplier products and services. 

The 2015 Global Information Security Workforce Study, an international survey of nearly 14,000 information security professionals 

published by ISC2, estimates the shortfall in the global information 

security workforce to reach 1.5 million by 2020. This problem is exacerbated in the energy space because we have two different sets 

of systems: systems that run the grid, referred to as operational 

technology (OT) and business systems that we refer to as information technology (IT). These two sets of systems command a different set of priorities that are served by individuals with different 

backgrounds, different vocabularies, and different goals and objectives. 

We need to educate and train more people with a skill set blended across those two types of systems, IT and OT, in order to make 

a noticeable difference. This challenge impacts the energy utilities, 

numerous vendors that supply systems for the grid, as well as the 

integrators who design and integrate larger, more complex systems 

for utilities. The deficit of cybersecurity workforce permeates all 

levels of the energy utility organization, and the same is true for 

the entire energy utility ICS and ICT supply chain. 
20 

The technology of the grid is in itself a cybersecurity concern. 

The grid is based on layers that have accumulated over time, and 

the legacy structure was not designed to be secured because security was not a concern when that infrastructure was implemented. 

And utilities have been utilizing a variety of technologies, methods, 

and techniques to help manage and mitigate some legacy infrastructure’s vulnerabilities. However, this is an ongoing concern, 

and acquiring and implementing such technologies, modifying network architectures, or replacing legacy infrastructure takes time 

and resources. 

The energy sector suffers from inconsistent threat information 

throughout the sector. Progress has been made but we still need 

a legal framework for information sharing that would remove the 

barriers that remain. Building robust systems that can be resilient 

in the face of cybersecurity threats requires considering security 

from inception. Utilities rely on vendors for systems design, development, implementation, and maintenance and are working on 

their approaches to productively communicate their assurance 

needs and then monitor the underperformance against those. 

Recently published standards and best practices provide requirements, methods, and techniques that help address this challenge. 

This includes NIST Cybersecurity Framework which is broadly 

used in the energy space. 

Cybersecurity is a complex challenge that cannot be solved overnight or permanently. It does not lend itself to a cookbook of solutions, nor can we envision every possible scenario to mitigate. 

We’re dealing with an asymmetric threat. However, we can act to 

reduce the cyber-related vulnerabilities of the grid. These actions 

include increasing supply of cybersecurity workforce that understands both IT and OT contexts, financially enable utilities to upgrade or phase out their legacy infrastructures, enacting information-sharing legislation that removes current barriers, and supporting industry-based standardization and NIST framework implementation to help integrate security considerations into current 

and future technologies. 

I look forward to further dialogue. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bartol follows:] 
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Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Ms. Bartol. 

I now recognize Dr. Baker for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. DANIEL BAKER, 

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF 

PLANETARY & SPACE PHYSICS; 

MOOG-BRE ENDOWED CHAIR OF SPACE SCIENCES; 

DIRECTOR, LABORATORY FOR ATMOSPHERIC 

AND SPACE PHYSICS, 

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER 

Dr. BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Extreme space weather events pose a threat to all forms of modern high technology, particularly the backbone provided by the 

electric power grid. The occurrence of severe space weather impacting our nation’s infrastructure is not a question of ‘‘if’’ but ‘‘when.’’ 

My group studied a powerful solar storm that occurred just three 

years ago on the 23rd of July 2012. This solar eruption produced 

a coronal mass ejection that moved from the sun’s to the distance 

of Earth orbit in only about 15 hours. This is among the very fastest-moving solar blasts ever witnessed in the space age. It was a 

ferocious disturbance that fortunately was directed somewhat away 

from Earth. We realized that a direct hit by such an extreme coronal mass ejection would cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that uses electricity. 

According to a 2009 study from the U.S. National Academies, the total economic impact from an event of this sort could exceed $2 

trillion or 20 times greater than the cost of Hurricane Katrina. 

Multi-ton power grid transformers disabled by such a storm could 

take years to repair or replace. 

The current capability of our technological society to predict 

space weather is primitive. Through programs supported by the 

National Science Foundation, NASA, NOAA, we observe the sun, 

and we can see the general properties of the expansion of the solar 

atmosphere and powerful solar storms heading in our general direction. However, the measurements at the first Lagrangian point 

provide only about 4five minutes of warning at best as to what will 

impact Earth. This is insufficient time for implementing most mitigation strategies. 

I spent two sobering days on the 20th and 21st of July at the 

6th Electric Infrastructure Security Summit here on Capitol Hill. 

Representatives from over 20 world nations attended the EIS Summit. CEOs from key electric power utilities and leaders from the 

U.S. military and several federal agencies spent time grappling 

with the immense challenges that would result if nuclear EMP or 

geomagnetic disturbances were to take down the North American 

power grid. In the EIS world, such events are termed ‘‘Black Sky’’ 

days. The 100-plus EIS delegates acknowledged that the collapse of 

the power system would be devastating, and that industry, government, and academia must all work together to the greatest degree 

possible to minimize the impact when such a Black Sky day occurs. 

In space weather, as in many things, forewarned is forearmed. 

Many studies have shown that improved prediction of space weath-
30 

er would have important economic impacts on our society in the 

same way that improved terrestrial weather forecasts have greatly 

improved our economic wellbeing and the quality of daily lives. 

Is our problem of improving space weather forecasting hopeless? 

Absolutely not. But it will require a substantially increased and 

dedicated government research program. Government-funded programs must be chosen to advance our civilization, our strategic importance in the world. In fact, efforts that would result in sufficient 

space weather prediction capability would be among our highest 

national—should be among our highest national priorities. Unfortunately, today’s federal investments and policies are not aligned 

with this set of space weather needs. 

The U.S. National Academies published a Decadal Survey in 

Solar and Space Physics in 2012. I was privileged to chair that activity. The Decadal Survey established the priorities for research 

relevant for space weather and basic research for NASA and NSF 

in the years 2013 to 2022. However, to date, NASA has not requested, nor has Congress funded, any of the significant initiatives 

recommended by the Decadal Survey. 

The Heliophysics Division of NASA, which has the main responsibility for the research required to improve space weather predictions, is NASA’s smallest science division. NSF space weather 

activities are only a small part of the geosciences division with 

many high priorities for other research areas. NOAA has the responsibility for making the actual space weather forecasts through 

the Boulder space-based—Space Weather Prediction Center, but 

these forecasts can only be based upon larger research efforts supported by the NSF and NASA. 

A very substantial program was envisioned in the Decadal Survey that would build on the—a true operational 24/7 national space 

weather program. This would be a large investment but is essential 

for our nation’s future. A key activity now underway is—by the federal agencies to address the Federal Space Weather Framework, as 

identified by the acronym SWORM with funding appropriately 

above the Decadal minimum level, the Decadal plan and the 

SWORM implementation plan could yield the required predictions 

in sufficient time. 

The existential threat to our society represented by severe space 

weather events, especially to the national power grid, demand a 

similar national commitment even in these times of fiscal constraint. The nation should issue a challenge to the space research 

community to provide the predictive capability for space weather 

sufficient to make our economy more resilient and to reduce to an 

acceptable level our national vulnerabilities. The nation should recognize that this is a pressing challenge and that substantial resources will be required. In return, the space research community 

must give its common pledge that it will deliver what the nation 

requires. I would respectfully suggest that the time for budgetary 

and policy action is now. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Baker follows:] 
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Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you, Dr. Baker. 

I now recognize Dr. Morgan for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. M. GRANGER MORGAN, 

HAMERSCHLAG UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, 

DEPARTMENTS OF ENGINEERING AND 

PUBLIC POLICY AND OF ELECTRICAL 

AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, 

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 

Dr. MORGAN. Good morning. And thanks very much to Chairman 

Smith, Loudermilk, and Weber, and Ranking Members Johnson, 

Beyer, and Grayson for the opportunity to testify today. 

As you heard, my name is Granger Morgan. I’m a professor at 

Carnegie Mellon, where I work on issues in engineering and public 

policy, including issues in the power system, often with the National Academy of Sciences, of which I’m a member. 

Unlike food and water, none of us consume electricity directly. 

Rather, we consume the services that electricity makes possible, 

and those services have become ever more critical to the safe, effective, and productive functioning of our lives as individuals and to 

our society and hence also to our national security. 

Today, I’ll talk about three things: 1) Strategies to avoid physical 

disruption of the power system; 2) Strategies to speed the process 

of putting the system back together after physical disruption; and 

3) Strategies to assume the continued provision of critical social 

services when grid electricity is not available. 

Because the power system is spread out across the landscape, it’s 

inherently vulnerable to both natural and intentional physical 

damage. In addition to space weather, natural hazards include 

wildfires, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and 

ice storms. 

We all know about the devastation that Hurricanes Sandy and 

Katrina caused to the power system. Ice storms can be equally devastating. The 1998 ice storm in Quebec and Ontario is a vivid illustration of the power system’s vulnerability to natural hazards. It 

collapsed miles of high-voltage power lines blacking out over 2–1/ 

2 million customers in Canada and the United States, caused damages of over $2–1/2 billion, involved 28 deaths in Canada and 17 

in the United States, and left some people without power in the 

dead of winter for many weeks. 

Of course, we can’t avoid hurricanes and ice storms but we can 

make the high-voltage power system much more resilient. Twentyfive years ago, a report by the Congressional Office of Technology 

Assessment noted that the power system is vulnerable to attackers 

using ‘‘just high-powered rifles.’’ A terrorist organization that wanted to cause a massive disruption to the U.S. power system could 

order rifles and armor-piercing bullets on the internet, place sharpshooters in the back of station wagons like the 2002 Washington 

snipers, and from a distance put holes in carefully selected sets of 

critical high-voltage power transformers. The 2013 rifle attack on 

the 500 kV substation in Congresswoman Lofgren’s district vividly 

illustrates the risk. 
37 

In a National Academy report I chaired on terrorism and the 

power system, we recommended replacing chain-link fences that 

surrounded many large substations with robust and opaque barriers, as well as a variety of other steps to limit access, increase 

security, and to harden the system. Progress has been made, but 

more is needed. 

Our Academy report also recommended that the Department of 

Homeland Security and the Department of Energy develop a stockpile of emergency replacement transformers, an idea first studied 

years ago by EPRI. Between 2012 and 2014, DHS demonstrated 

this idea, but there’s an urgent need to move beyond demonstration 

to implement a stockpile. 

Earlier this month, Paul Parfomak at CRS prepared an excellent 

report on power transformers and I urge the Committee to give his 

comprehensive summary a careful reading. 

The power industry is well organized to deal with damage from 

a range of normal disasters. However, there’s a need to better address recovery from larger events. In my written testimony I’ve 

elaborated on options and on efforts by several groups to reduce 

vulnerabilities. 

Equally important, the nation should take steps to assure that 

critical social services can continue to operate when the power system goes down, whatever the cause. Key strategies include: LED 

traffic lights with solar cell and battery backup so that traffic 

doesn’t snarl and block emergency vehicles in key transportation 

corridors; more systematic and reliable use of backup generators; 

cell phone and other communication systems that will remain intact and continue to operate not just for hours but for days; and 

greater use of smart meters and microgrids to allow local islands 

of power to continue to support key social services. 

I’ve run two meetings at the National Academy on power system 

resilience, the more recent under the auspices of the Resilient 

America Roundtable that I chair. Web addresses for the video of 

those meetings are provided in my written testimony. 

Thanks very much for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Morgan follows:] 
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Chairman LOUDERMILK. First of all, let me thank the witnesses 

for their testimony. This is a very, very important issue to both of 

these subcommittees. 

And Members are reminded that the committee rules limit questioning to five minutes, and the Chair recognizes himself for the 

first five minutes. 

Ms. Bartol, I want to focus on you because I spent 30 years in 

the IT industry prior to coming to Congress, and as part of that, 

I actually worked with a lot of small utilities, municipal-owned 

utilities in automating a lot of their SCADA systems, providing 

fiberoptic connectivity and allowing them to be more automated in 

the control of substations, et cetera. 

You had mentioned supply chain as part of your testimony, 

which is one of the areas of the concern with me. And I think you 

also mentioned a standardization. Is there any standard as far as 

configuration, what infrastructure components for a network looking at the cybersecurity side gateways, routers, security devices? 

Do you know, is there an industry standard or an accepted product 

list that we know that if a utility implements this type of product 

or this type of configuration, then it’s approved, it would be more 

likely to be secure or that something that’s lacking? And what’s 

your comment as far as is what we need in standardization? 

Ms. BARTOL. I don’t believe there’s a list as you’re describing, 

and it really—what’s needed depends on each individual utility’s 

configuration and architecture. There are standards that provide a 

set of processes and so to say rules that help organizations think 

through how to do this well, to help them think through putting 

together processes and relationships with suppliers that are more 

robust than otherwise. And those—there’s—in this document— 

there’s an international ISO document specifically just for security 

and supply relationships. There’s an IEC document for control systems. So there’s a number of standards. They tend to look at the 

process more than specific configuration because it all depends on 

individual—— 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Right. Is there a vulnerability there? 

And I’m coming from the equipment side because I know many of 

the especially small utilities will build the SCADA systems where 

they can control substations and different elements within that 

EMC or within that municipality. Then they’ll connect it to the 

internet so their technicians can respond remotely without coming 

in. 

We have seen that that’s a huge vulnerability. When I was in the 

military, we had an approved products list that have been tested 

that says if you’re going to do this—which that are going to happen, you know, given that’s going to happen—if you use this product with this configuration, then you’re going to more likely be secured, but I know that there’s numbers of small utilities out there 

that can easily be—I know they are very vulnerable the nation. 

Would a standardized equipment list that has been tested—because we also know that a lot of these guys go in and they will buy 

their equipment from eBay or wherever they can get it cheaper and 

I know at one time some foreign-made hardware is actually encoded in the firmware with holes, backdoors to allow people to get 
49 

in. Is that something that you feel is needed? And also, I’d like Dr. 

Morgan to answer—I see that you’re trying to respond. 

Ms. Bartol, would you comment on that? Is that something that 

you feel is something that we should look at? 

Ms. BARTOL. A list of approved tested equipment would be tremendously helpful. My only reservation here is that, once you put 

a list in stone, if it’s hard to get on it, then it would stifle innovation. So it can be done, it should be done, it needs to be done carefully, and there are several groups trying to work on this kind of 

a concept right now. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you. Dr. Morgan? 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, on the cyber issue, I mean your comment 

about interconnecting to the internet of course was critical. You 

might think in terms of not so much of specific equipment but in 

terms of architectures or system designs because that’s the big 

issue. I mean if I do silly things like have wireless systems in substations that somebody from the outside can hack or if I have an 

internet connection for my SCADA, then I’m just sort of asking for 

problems. 

I might say one other thing on the cyber issue, and that is I 

know how to really cause a lot of disruption and inconvenience 

with cyber attacks. There haven’t actually been any successful ones 

that I’m aware of, but I don’t know how to cause large-spread physical damage. 

In contrast to the sort of thing that Dr. Baker was talking about 

or the sort of physical events that I was describing, which could, 

you know, if we got caught without appropriate preparation, could 

result in disruptions that came—that lasted for months or maybe 

longer—— 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Right. 

Dr. MORGAN. —as opposed to, you know, days or weeks, which 

a cyber attack clearly could cause. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Yeah. Thank you. One last question, Ms. 

Bartol. You talked about legacy systems, and I’ve recently read 

that there’s a physical or online attack once every four days, and 

I assume that is accurate. But when we are talking about going 

from a legacy system, which really what we’re doing now is we’re 

putting new technology on top—layering on top of the legacy system. When you’re talking about going to a legacy system, I’m assuming you’re talking about a smart grid type system. And part of 

that is the smart meters. Is there a vulnerability of having smart 

meters at home and what type of information are we gathering 

from that? 

Ms. BARTOL. To my knowledge, the information gathered from 

the smart meters is information about electricity usage. Nothing 

that qualifies as personal information is gathered. The vulnerability lies in the fact that this is smart technology, this is IP internet protocol-accessible technology and lots of access points, a lot 

more access points than before. So the Swiss cheese is bigger and 

you have more opportunity to come in. That’s the vulnerability 

really. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Okay. Thank you. 

And I apologize to the Committee; I exceeded my time. I now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer. 
50 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank all of you very much for coming and talking with us. 

Dr. Baker, in talking about severe space weather events and 

black sky days, number one, how frequent are these? Are these 

something that we can see once in our lifetime or once in 200 years 

or once every five years? Is it realistic to think that we can extend 

the warning time from the 45 minutes at Lagrange 1 to something 

much longer than that? And then as dramatic as these are, are 

there really mitigation efforts we can take that will make a difference? 

And by the way, are they limited to solar events or are there 

other extreme space events that we should be concerned about? 

Dr. BAKER. With respect to the latter, there could be some other 

extreme events, but the most probable is really a solar-driven event 

of the sort we’re talking about. How frequently these occur is the 

subject of continuing investigation, but the largest of these events 

are probably like equivalent of a 1-in-100-year kind of flood or 

something like that. But we are learning more about the sun all 

the time and recognizing that these could be occurring more on the 

time scale of every decade or two, every solar cycle. 

The—I—the other part of your question I guess—— 

Mr. BEYER. Extending the warning period—— 

Dr. BAKER. Extending the warning period—— 

Mr. BEYER. —the 4five minutes we have now. 

Dr. BAKER. Yes, that’s one of the key things that is under research right now. By looking at the sun, we can see that coronal 

mass ejections are being emitted from the sun. This can give us 

perhaps warning of 12 to 14 hours, something like that. If we knew 

what the conditions inside of that material that was expelled from 

the sun were, whether that was going to be extremely harmful or 

relatively benign, has largely to do with the interplanetary magnetic field. If we could do that, then we could give perhaps eight 

to ten hours of warning. That would be extremely beneficial for 

many who are trying to prepare themselves for the largest of these 

events that are coming. 

Mr. BEYER. All right. Thank you, Dr. Baker. 

And Ms. Bartol, you talked about the need for information-sharing legislation. Can I take it from that that information-sharing 

right now is prohibited by state or federal law? And are you aware 

of any initiatives or any proposals right now in play to make that 

information-sharing legal? 

Ms. BARTOL. It’s not prohibited but it is difficult due to various 

unclarities and restrictions that do exist. We—you know, the industry appreciates two bills passed by the House before summer, and 

we hope that the Senate will pass the information-sharing bill. It’s 

about giving liability protections to organizations that need to 

share and it’s mostly about the threat indicators. There’s—it sort 

of made of data that comes in and you put in your system. That’s 

what’s being—— 

Mr. BEYER. I know all of us on the committee would love to pursue that in a constructive way. 

And, Dr. Morgan, you talked about the ice storms. You lead with 

that. As long as I’ve been paying attention, they’ve been bringing 

down power lines throughout the Northeast and Canada. Is there 
51 

new engineering out there to make the overhead power lines less 

susceptible? They’re burying all the power lines in new projects 

around Virginia, for example. 

Dr. MORGAN. Yeah, they’re burying lower-voltage power lines. 

You’re not likely to want to bury 500 and 765 kV transmission 

lines or the DC (direct current) lines that come down from La 

Grande in Quebec. But you can do things like build more robust 

towers. I mean one of the problems in the Quebec example that I 

gave was that there was a lot of collapsing of towers, and actually 

California has passed legislation that says that every so many towers you’ve got to put a robust tower that can—that won’t collapse. 

I mean it’s much cheaper to build towers that are just guide and 

held up by the wires but then you can get a domino collapse. 

So there are things like that you can do. They cost a bit more 

and you have to find regulatory strategies to pay for it, but the 

California example is one case where it’s been done. 

Mr. BEYER. Great. Thank you. 

And Mr. Lordan, it’s fascinating with the E1, E2, E3 questions. 

On GMD and time to respond, how best do we expand that time 

to respond? What—on the E1, E2, E3—are these only coming from 

nuclear weapons? And is there something we can do on arms control and nonproliferation to guard against that? 

Mr. LORDAN. So let’s do E1, E2, E3 warning first. Typically—the 

EMP is a nuclear device. Typically, a nuclear device or some highpowered device, the fast rise time for the E1 is the most important 

part and a nuclear device is the way to go for that. We assume no 

warning for that, and so we’ve—we believe operational strategies 

are inapplicable for EMP, a nuclear attack. Are there things that 

DOD can do to give us warning, to mitigate attack? Certainly, but 

that’s outside of my purview. 

And if I could go on to GMD—— 

Mr. BEYER. Yeah, please. 

Mr. LORDAN. —for warning. Okay, so the average storm is about 

four days. Dr. Baker says there’s fast ones. So we can observe the 

sun and we can tell when it’s coming, and there’s things that you 

can do in that four day period even though you know that it’s kind 

of vague but you’re not sure exactly how big and you’re pretty sure 

it’s going to hit you but you’re not exactly sure. There’s things you 

can do. You can defer maintenance on your transmission line so 

you have more capacity, you can back off generation so that you 

have a little bit of room to add voltage support. So there’s things 

like that you can do. 

And we are doing studies with NASA where they’re trying to improve the accuracy of the observations of the sun in the first four 

days before it reaches DSCOVR satellite, yes. 

Mr. BEYER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you. 

The Chair now recognizes the Chairman of the Energy Subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you. 

Mr. Lordan, a friend of mine likes to say that nothing is faster 

than the speed of light, and if you don’t believe that, try opening 

the refrigerator door before the light comes on. 
52 

An NNEMP, a nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse device, now you 

talked about the sun flare. I was astounded by that and did a little 

math. The sun is 93 million miles from Earth or 94.5 at its aphelion. So at 186,000 miles an hour, how long do you anticipate it 

would take an event like the solar flare to hit us? 

Mr. LORDAN. The storm is fast but not as fast as the speed of 

light. It travels about a million miles an hour, the typical one. And 

there’s faster ones. So 93 million miles will get you there in about 

96 hours is 4 days, so that’s an easy way of doing it. And then the 

Lagrange 1 point where Dr. Baker referred, we have a satellite 

there. There’s an A satellite, there’s a DSCOVR satellite, and then 

when it reaches that point, you get a lot better information, but unfortunately, the gravitational Lagrange point is only one hour away 

from Earth. There’s only—one million miles away. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. And my study, I know that the NNEMP, nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons, there’s a lot of discussion. 

There’s nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons, and they talk 

about capacitor banks. 

Mr. LORDAN. Um-hum. 

Mr. WEBER. So I owned an air-conditioning company for 34 years 

and we’re used to a lot of power, you know, calculations on a house 

being built, the size of a wire and all that kind of stuff needed, so 

I pay close attention to it. And of course being from Texas we have 

the ERCOT, Electric Reliability Council of Texas. We have our own 

grid, about 85 percent of the State. So we pay real close attention 

to that. 

But from the nonnuclear weapon standpoint, the capacitor banks 

that could go on the end of a missile, are you familiar with those? 

Mr. LORDAN. Yes, sir. And there are smaller devices that are 

more accessible to more parties so we’re trying to figure out the 

risk spectrum, the folks who can supply high-altitude nuclear device and have the missile capacity to get it here. It’s small— 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Mr. LORDAN. —and the effect is high. These intentional electromagnetic interference, which is what you’re referring to, these are 

more accessible to more folks. The thing about those devices is that 

they provide a local impact, and therefore, you’d need to have a coordinated attack to make a big impact. And so I think this group 

is talking more about high impact— 

Mr. WEBER. Right, and we’re going to discuss that grid. I think 

it was Dr. Morgan who might have said you wouldn’t want to put 

high-voltage underground. And one way to harden the grid would 

be to have most of your utilities underground. But when you say 

small, back to the NNEMPs, define small, 4 feet, 6 feet, 2 feet. 

Mr. LORDAN. I think—I’m going to say—I’m not sure exactly. I 

think I see things in a bread truck is what I usually see the picture 

of— 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Mr. LORDAN. —but I think they can be they can be smaller than 

that. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. So let’s go on to what I think Dr. Morgan 

said. You wouldn’t want to put high-voltage wire underneath the 

ground, and a lot of utilities in a lot of States require—a lot of subdivisions require that utilities come into the neighborhood now un-
53 

derground, whether it’s—you know, of course obviously water, 

sewer, electricity, phone, that kind of stuff, as opposed to the aerial 

overhead. How high does voltage have to be before you think you 

wouldn’t want to put it underground? 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, it’s a matter of cost. I mean you can put a 

500 kV line underground. I mean we run 500 kV lines across 

things like, you know, oceans with— 

Mr. WEBER. Sure. 

Dr. MORGAN. —cables but it’s really expensive, and so— 

Mr. WEBER. So you’re not talking about from an engineering perspective—— 

Dr. MORGAN. I’m saying—I’m not saying you can’t do it— 

Mr. WEBER. —just the dollar amount? 

Dr. MORGAN. —I’m saying it’s excluded. 

Mr. WEBER. Right. 

Dr. MORGAN. On the issue of EMP, he’s right. I could take out 

a substation with a small homemade EMP device. And I could also 

take— 

Mr. WEBER. Now, let’s define small. Is that three feet, two feet? 

Dr. MORGAN. Something that would fit in the back of a pickup 

truck. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay, so a truck bomb? 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, yeah, I mean if you want to think of it that 

way. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Dr. MORGAN. On the other hand, you know, I could also take it 

out with a rifle, and so it’s not clear to me that EMP— 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Dr. MORGAN. —is the sensible— 

Mr. WEBER. Well, let’s go there. You talked about—one of you 

talked about the snipers from 2002. 

Dr. MORGAN. Yeah. 

Mr. WEBER. So transformer is a set of coils, and again we dealt 

with transformers, high-voltage, low-voltage in the air-conditioning 

business with oil in it, a light oil—— 

Dr. MORGAN. Right, in a big steel box. 

Mr. WEBER. That’s right. Why don’t they just make the steel 

thicker and less—— 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, that’s one of the things that’s being talked 

about. Another thing, of course, that’s being talked about is—I 

mean, you know, you can buy armor-piercing bullets on the internet, and so it’s—there is—you really have to make it quite a bit 

thicker. But the other thing I can do is things like simply making 

it hard to see from the outside. 

Mr. WEBER. Sure. Well—— 

Dr. MORGAN. I mean at the moment— 

Mr. WEBER. You betcha. 

Dr. MORGAN. —it’s behind a chain-link fence. 

Mr. WEBER. And, Mr. Lordan, you wanted to weigh in. 

Mr. LORDAN. Just real quick. I mean you can make the tank 

thicker but the radiator where you’re trying to dispel the heat is— 

Mr. WEBER. You’ve got to have a way to get the heat out. Yeah. 
54 

Mr. LORDAN. And the attack in 2013 that you alluded to, they 

shot the tank a few times but what they really shot was the radiators— 

Mr. WEBER. Well, a really good sniper can take the insulators 

out and bring the wires off down in contact with metal structure 

so—— 

Dr. MORGAN. Yeah, but that one’s easier to fix. It’s if I actually 

fry the transmitter— 

Mr. WEBER. Oh, absolutely. You know, let a squirrel get across 

a couple of those things, it doesn’t do the squirrel a lot of good and 

I’ve seen quite a number of transformers blown. Okay. Well, thank 

you. I yield. 

Dr. MORGAN. May I say one last thing, and that is if I’m a terrorist and I have a nuclear weapon, it seems most unlikely I’m 

going to use it to do an EMP. You know, unfortunately, it’s true. 

I’m going to put it in a major metropolitan area. 

Yeah. 

Mr. WEBER. We had that discussion in my office this morning 

with my staffer in this area because I said, look, you’re going to 

want to have death and destruction that shows up on TV. You’re 

going to put it in a football stadium, for example. 

Dr. MORGAN. Exactly. And EMP at that point is the last of our 

worries. 

Mr. WEBER. Yeah, good point. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Grayson, 

who is the Ranking Member on the Energy Subcommittee. 

Mr. GRAYSON. All right. I’m going to be asking Dr. Morgan a couple of questions based upon what would have been able to avoid 

major blackouts in the past, what kind of research and other efforts 

we should be undertaking now to avoid things that have already 

happened. Here’s an interesting list. These are the 12 largest 

blackouts in history and what caused them. The first one I lived 

through, it was in New York in 1965. It was caused by the tripping 

of a 230 kilovolt transmission line and a domino effect that followed that; 1978, Thailand, the generators failed; 1989, Canada, a 

geomagnetic storm; 1999 in Brazil, a lightening struck an electricity substation near Itaipu; 2001, India, failure of a substation; 

2003, in the United States and Canada there was a high-voltage 

power line that brushed against some overgrown trees; 2003, Italy, 

two internal lines overloaded; 2005, Indonesia, failure of a 500 kilovolt transmission line; 2006 in Europe, a power company switched 

off a power line in order to let a cruise ship pass; 2008, China, winter storms; 2009, Brazil, the Itaipu generator failed for a while; 

2012, India, the largest in history, 670 million people lost electricity and three power grids collapsed because circuit breakers 

tripped. 

So going through this list, clearly most of them were internal to 

the grid. Most of them were not caused by external events. There’s 

not any instance in that list of cybersecurity issue, there’s not any 

instance in that list of an electromagnetic pulse, not any instance 

of a terrorist attack, not any instance of any squirrel attack, and 

only one instance of space weather. So I think this can help us to 

focus what really would matter in this case, which is how do you 

avoid blackouts? Dr. Morgan? 
55 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, I certainly agree with that assessment. I 

would say one other thing first, which is the blackouts that most 

of us experience on an annual basis are not caused by the sort of 

large-scale blackouts that you just described but they’re caused by, 

you know, people crashing their truck into a utility pole or a 

branch coming down on a line in a thunderstorm or something like 

that. 

For the big ones that you did discuss, there are obviously several 

things one can do. One needs much better training and supervisory 

controls so that you don’t take steps that put the system into a vulnerable state. And there’s a lot of research going on at DOE and 

elsewhere and within the industry on how to provide better control 

and also how to better train operators. Up until recently, it’s been 

really hard to analyze the dynamic flows in a power system in realtime. Computers are getting to the point that you can get close to 

doing that. The strategy in the past has been think of all the contingencies that could override arise, analyze them all and figure 

out what I ought to do in each of those cases, and keep people prepared to move on those things. So the answer is, yes, there’s a lot 

that can be done and much of it is being done. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Well, if you had to pick one single thing that 

would make blackouts like the ones that I described, the large-scale 

blackouts less likely, one form of research or development, what 

would that be? 

Dr. MORGAN. Better supervisory status control, that is knowing 

what—how close to the edge I am and what my vulnerabilities are 

so if an event does—I mean all of these things are triggered by 

some event like, you know, an operator making a mistake or an ice 

storm or a flood or something, but I need to know what the status 

of the system is and have operators prepared to back off or do other 

things to take contingency—or to consider contingencies. 

Up until recently we’ve always used the sort of N minus 1 rule, 

that is the rule that if one thing goes, the system ought to continue 

to operate okay. And we’re getting sufficiently tight in terms of the 

capacity with which we’re stressing the system that probably that’s 

not a sufficiently conservative rule anymore and so people need to 

do analysis to figure out where they are at and what sorts of failures could cause what kinds of problems. 

Mr. GRAYSON. So are there national federal programs or even 

utility company programs along the lines of what you described or 

is it basically ad hoc at this point? 

Dr. MORGAN. No, there are—it’s not basically ad hoc. There are 

serious research programs at a number of the national labs like 

PNNL and EPRI and others on the industry side are also actively 

engaged in this sort of work. This is an issue that the industry 

really does understand and is working hard to address. 

I might say one other thing, and that is that the sort of replacement transformer issue that I mentioned addresses not just the 

kinds of destruction that could happen from terrorism or from natural events of the sort that you described but also the sort of thing 

that Dr. Baker talked about. I mean there are multiple reasons 

why one would like to have standby equipment, and transformers 

are just really big and hard to move and expensive, and so we 

ought to be doing better there. 
56 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thanks. I yield back. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman 

from Florida, Mr. Posey. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, witnesses, for appearing today. And, Mr. Chairman, 

I thank you especially for holding this hearing. This issue is so vitally important to the national security of our country and I think 

possibly ultimately the survival of our species. 

The New York Times had a bestseller for a while. It’s called ‘‘One 

Second After’’ by William Forstchen. I assume you all have read 

that before? 

Mr. MORGAN. No. 

Mr. POSEY. Well, my next question was going to be could you find 

any inconsistencies with the reality in the book? The book allegedly 

was written based on a Congressional intelligence report on the 

EMP threat. And it’s staggering. 

Mr. LORDAN. Would you want me to—— 

Mr. POSEY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. LORDAN. Yeah. Do you want me to answer that—— 

Mr. POSEY. Yes. 

Mr. LORDAN. —question? Okay. So, yeah, it was a novel, and so 

there were liberties taken and they did base this on classified information, which I don’t have access to. But when we analyzed what 

the impact would be, and this is what we call a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, detonated seven, ten miles above the Earth, we 

know that there were some relays are going to be affected but not 

all. We know that some computers, some communication systems 

are going to be impacted but not all. And it is possible and likely 

that there could be blackouts, but then there’s a recovery and 

there’s things you can do to recover more quickly. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. Dr. Baker mentioned the solar flare that we 

avoided. I think it crossed the path of our orbit about two weeks— 

if we had been about two weeks further ahead, it would have been 

very serious consequences. You talked about it being in trillions of 

dollars. Could you quantify that just in a couple of brief sentences, 

the kind of impact that would have had on everyday life? 

Dr. BAKER. Well, I think—yes, it was—missed the Earth by 

about one week, about seven days, six or seven days. If it had occurred about a week earlier, so—it would have certainly hit the 

Earth. That would have been the kind of scenario that we think 

we would most dread. It would be a huge impact on the power grid. 

It would stand the chance of knocking out a number of the large, 

extremely high-voltage transformers on the backbone. We don’t 

know how many, we don’t know exactly the failure modes, but the 

$2 trillion really comes from looking at if one is without electrical 

power for weeks or months or extending into the timescale of a 

year or so, that this really then starts to be in the trillion of dollars 

kind of cost. 

Mr. POSEY. What kind of damage do you think it would have 

been to our satellite systems? 

Dr. BAKER. Well, that’s the other component of this, which I’m 

glad to have the chance to respond to here is that it’s not just the 

effects on the power grid directly; it’s also the effects on satellites, 

the timing that we get from the global positioning systems which 
57 

feeds into the other systems, it’s the communication, it’s all the 

things that we rely on. If all of those start to collapse and they 

start to collapse in sequence, then we are facing I think a kind of 

a society that we haven’t seen for decades or 100 years or sent back 

to very primitive kind of conditions. 

Mr. POSEY. I commend to you the book ‘‘One Second After’’—— 

Dr. BAKER. I will—— 

Mr. POSEY. —and—— 

Dr. BAKER. Yes. 

Mr. POSEY. The consequence, if it takes out enough satellites, 

you know, you don’t have a weather report, you don’t have a news 

report, you don’t have a cell phone, you don’t have a laptop—— 

Dr. BAKER. Absolutely. 

Mr. POSEY. —you don’t have a car that works, you don’t have— 

I mean you’re just out of business—— 

Dr. BAKER. Absolutely. 

Mr. POSEY. —and it is very, very, very primitive. And the threat 

is real, as you mentioned. It’s incredibly real. 

Dr. BAKER. That’s right. 

Mr. POSEY. Are any of you aware of any technology to more or 

less have a super—for lack of a better term—circuit breaker that 

can detect an EMP threat in advance and shut this system down 

whether it be on a satellite or on a generator? Are any of you 

aware of that? 

Mr. LORDAN. I’d say the—if you get hit with an EMP, the rise 

time of that impact is faster than any electronics device could respond to, I assert. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. 

Dr. MORGAN. A couple of things. We were sort of disparaging 

about the technology in some earlier Soviet fighters until we figured out that the reason they were using vacuum tubes rather 

than solid state was precisely to be EMP-resilient. 

We have an annual doctoral qualifying exam in our department 

and we used a 2X Carrington event—Carrington event was the 

largest measured solar mass ejection—as the subject for the exam 

this past year, and the focus was on the resilience of emergency 

communication. You know, if you’re using fiberoptics and you’ve 

hardened stuff at both ends, the fiberoptics are going to be resilient 

to this, so it really is a matter of looking carefully across the system for potential vulnerabilities. And as you heard in the case of 

the first testimony, if I back off the loading of the transformers, for 

example, so the cores are not saturated, I’m far less likely to fry 

them and I can do other things like capacitive coupling and some 

other—— 

Mr. POSEY. There is some—— 

Dr. MORGAN. —so the answer is there are strategies. 

Mr. POSEY. There are people who now are working on a highspeed technology to detect it and super high-speed react to it but 

there just seems to be, believe it or not, no demand for it, which 

kind of amazes me but—— 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, to just say again what I said before, which 

is to get a widespread EMP from a nuclear device, it has to be a 

high-altitude burst and it—if we have an adversary that engages 

in a high-altitude burst, I think EMP may be the least of our prob-
58 

lems because I presume it’ll be combined with a whole lot of surface burst, which will—— 

Mr. POSEY. Sure. 

Dr. MORGAN. I mean only a major nuclear exchange is likely to 

lead us to that point. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m out of time so thank 

you for your graciousness. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. The Chair recognizes the gentleman 

from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thanks, Mr. Chair. You know, the purpose of 

this is we’re a very connected society obviously, and that connectedness is great for comfort, for convenience, for efficiency, but it has 

an obvious downside, which is a potential domino effect of it all 

failing at once, whether it’s a nuclear device, it’s cybersecurity, it’s 

space weather, it’s just some huge planetary Earth kind of weather 

thing. 

So, Dr. Baker, I want to start with you real quick and then to 

you, Ms. Bartol, and then I’m going to yield the balance of my time 

to Mr. Takano. 

Given where we are, if you had your wish list, what would be the 

things we could do to predict better and more quickly the space 

weather events you talked about to minimize the damage that 

might come from a big event? 

Dr. BAKER. I think what we really need to have is a 24 by 7 very 

dedicated kind of program to look at the sun from sort of all directions and to be able to, as soon as possible, assess whether the disturbances coming from the sun are going to be harmful or relatively benign. If we could do that, we would then be much better 

positioned to react appropriately and to probably minimize the impacts. 

The difference is that we—right now—light travels at 186,000 

miles per second, 8 minutes warning that something is happening 

on the sun, but the fastest of these events can be at Earth in 12 

or 14 hours. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. And you would suggest that we invest some 

more to avoid what could be—— 

Dr. BAKER. That’s right. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. —potentially unbelievable costs 

Dr. BAKER. That’s right. I think the—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. 

Dr. BAKER. —investment in such an observing program would be 

dwarfed by the cost society would face if we don’t do those things. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. Ms. Bartol, what would you suggest that 

we do today to minimize the potential for cyber attacks that bring 

down the system? 

Ms. BARTOL. We need to educate the society about their behavior 

on the internet and educate specifically in the case of energy industry the people who work in the utility, from executives to people 

on the ground, boots on the ground, especially the small utilities 

that the Chairman discussed. They have one IT guy or maybe a security guy at the same time. It’s a matter of expertise; it’s a matter 

of knowledge. There may be technologies and techniques they 

might not know. So education is huge here. 
59 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California. 

Mr. TAKANO. Dr. Morgan, what are microgrids and would they be 

useful—a useful tool that could be—that could enable communities 

to withstand and recover faster from high-impact events? 

Dr. MORGAN. A microgrid is a small collection of local generators, 

perhaps combined heat and power systems, which are interconnected and then also usually connected to the grid. The big difficulty we have with—and so every presentation you go to, you’ll 

see—at DOE, at EPRI, and others, you’ll see all this proliferation 

of new technology on the demand side, that is, on the distribution 

system side. What those don’t typically talk about is who’s going 

to own all that stuff. And most U.S. States have rules that provide 

exclusive service territories to utilities, which means the only entity that can own one of those things is a utility, and pardon my 

EPRI friends; I’ve advised them a lot—I would not rank the distribution utilities as the most innovative firms in the country. And 

so I think there needs to be some strategy to allow small-scale private players to get—we’ve deregulated much of the supply side. We 

need to do a bit more on the demand side to allow small-scale players to come in underneath the distribution system to build these 

sorts of systems because they can provide very considerable resilience in—for critical social services in the event that the large-scale 

system goes down. 

I’m not talking about getting off the grid. And I’m talking about 

tariffs that are symmetric so they recognize the cost that you impose on the big system and vice versa. When the United States— 

when the Congress passed law that said I must—if I build a generator, the utility must interconnect me, that was a federal law and 

now that’s true all across the country. On the other hand, if I try 

to sell some of that power to Dr. Baker next door, that’s in most 

States not legal yet, and so I don’t know if this has got to be solved 

50 times for different States or if it could be solved once for the 

nation as a whole in the same way that interconnection for single 

generators was solved. But I think it’s an issue that would be 

worth your exploring. 

Mr. TAKANO. Yeah, my time is up. I yield back. Thank you. I 

thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you. I recognize Mr. Rohrabacher—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Chair, just a second. Did you recognize 

that Dr. Baker was from Colorado? 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. I believe we did in the very beginning, 

yes. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I meant to mention that. I’m sorry. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Oh, thank you. I recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. And, again, Mr. 

Chairman, I appreciate your leadership on this issue. This is an 

issue that is vital to our country’s safety and security, and frankly, 

this is the first detailed hearing I’ve been to on it. I congratulate 

you for stepping up and providing that leadership. 
60 

And I’d also like to associate myself with Mr. Takano’s line of 

questioning, which was right on target. And—but I would like to 

disassociate myself with Mr. Grayson’s line of questioning. 

Mr. GRAYSON. I appreciate that. Feel free to disassociate yourself 

at any time from any questions I ask. I feel good about that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. He wanted me to do that to help him in his 

Senatorial campaign. 

The discussion that we’re looking at here is, as far as I can see, 

there’s low probability of certain types of disruptions but with highimpact, very high-impact, but then we have other vulnerabilities 

that you’ve outlined that have lower impact. Where should our emphasis be? Should it be on this—basically a solar storm in trying 

to make sure that we are lined up for that and have a few days’ 

notice and then being able to turn off our machines and in the 

meantime to sort of minimize the effect, or should we be looking 

at these various things that you’re talking about, adding steel so 

that the terrorist squirrels don’t get to us? 

Dr. BAKER. Let me first say that I think this is a very active 

topic of research trying to understand what lower—you know, higher-frequency, lower-impact kind of events are doing to our systems. 

We can—it’s very useful for us to think about the most extreme 

events and how we would inure ourselves to their effects. If we did 

that, we’d probably make ourselves better for the lower frequent— 

for the lower-impact events as well. But right now I think we don’t 

know exactly where the sweet spot is, and investment versus, you 

know, the cost of doing things versus the impact that we might 

have. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, we just were treated to some information about possibilities that utilities and that being one of the roadblocks to—and, by the way, it’s just not utilities; it’s also politics 

in the local area which determine what the policies of those utilities will be. Let me just ask this. In terms of—aren’t we really talking about de-griding the country? Isn’t that really the long-term 

concepts? No, perhaps we have reached a stage where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been trying to push me 

for a long time into basically having independent generation of 

electricity by solar power and things such as that, individual homes 

de-grided? Go right ahead, sir. 

Dr. MORGAN. I think we’re always going to need a grid. I think 

you’re right that there will be much more dispersal of generation 

but, you know, the sun doesn’t shine at night, and at the moment, 

storage technologies are very expensive, and there are some broader reasons as well that you really want to have a high-voltage 

backbone. And the wind doesn’t blow all the time either. For example, in the Bonneville Power Administration some years ago there 

was a period of ten days when not a single wind machine put out 

a single bit of electricity. So you’ve got to have strategies to deal 

with that. 

On your earlier question, though, what’s the appropriate balance 

between smaller-scale stuff and the very large things? I mean I 

think you’ve got to have a bit of both and you’ve got to figure out 

how to strike the appropriate balance. You can’t go off the deep end 

and put all your energies into worrying about the rare events that 

could cause nationwide or large regional blackouts and not worry 
61 

at all about local and smaller-scale stuff of the sort that hurricanes 

or others can do, and so you need a balance. 

There’s one other thing I might say on that, and that is, given 

that you don’t know which utility is going to get into trouble, there 

is a problem of sort of the commons. I mean no single—especially 

for terrorism, no single utility can really justify in economic terms 

making the investments for something like a transformer stockpile. 

On the other hand, the nation as a whole ought to have it because 

there is a good chance that somewhere, sometime we are going to 

wish we had it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, let me just note that the storage of electricity is a major part of this whole concept of how we’re 

going to deal with this. There is a lot of research going on right 

now. There are some people who are working on what could be 

breakthrough technologies in the storage of electricity, and this, 

too, might be an interesting discussion for the Committee. Thank 

you. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Thank you. We’ll keep that in consideration. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Again, I agree this is a very, very important topic and I appreciate our panel being here with us today. 

Dr. Baker, you know, in 1989 a geomagnetic disturbance brought 

on by a solar weather event caused millions of Canadians to lose 

their power for approximately nine hours. The grid in that situation collapsed within 92 seconds of the geomagnetic disturbance 

event. If a similar event occurred today almost 30 years later, 

would there be more of a warning? Would we know about it in advance? 

Dr. BAKER. I think what would probably be the biggest difference 

between now and 30 years ago is how interconnected—Congressman Perlmutter mentioned the interconnectedness of society. I 

think that we are much more tightly coupled now. The impacts 

would propagate more—further and I think more rapidly and probably more seriously. And so—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. So it could be a more negative impact? 

Dr. BAKER. It could be a more negative impact by far I believe, 

and that’s one of the things that I guess I’ve been most struck by 

in my recent examination of these issues is how interconnected society is and how interconnected our technologies are. We’ve surrounded ourselves, as we like to say, in a cyber electric cocoon that 

is—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Sure. 

Dr. BAKER. —much more tightly coupled now than it was 30 

years ago. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yeah, I share your concern. As a 30-year-plus IT 

professional, I have a great concern about the interconnectivity. 

There’s great benefit to it but there’s also tremendous risk associated with it. So in that vein, is there technology available to help 

us contain or limit the impact and should we be looking at that 

kind of technology? 

Dr. BAKER. I think we should be going into this with our eyes 

much more open than they are. I think many, many times we de-
62 

velop technologies in one sector without thinking about how they 

relate to other sectors and how dependent we become. Again, the 

timing signals that come from the global positioning system are 

playing into many other kind of technologies, and we at least 

should be aware of that. I believe we ought to be much more careful about what the interconnectedness that we build into our systems and—now and into the future. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, yeah, I agree with you. It certainly gives us 

pause to stop and think. You know, we should do a risk-benefit 

analysis to determine whether or not the risk of a particular—— 

Dr. BAKER. Right. 

Mr. JOHNSON. —system interconnectivity is an issue or not. 

How often do other events affect everyday life like high-frequency 

radio communications, our space travelers’ health, satellite function, and aircraft electronic systems? 

Dr. BAKER. I think when you think about the broad sweep of 

space weather and all those dimensions that you’re talking about, 

it probably affects us, you know, all the time, and on a daily basis 

there can be things. But when the sun becomes more active especially, then I think that this becomes something that can affect all 

those sectors and sometimes simultaneously. 

So as we talked about before, there’s a lot of focus on the most 

extreme events and the rarity of those extreme events, but as we 

build these more capable systems, the threshold for effective search 

go down and I think it becomes not a matter of every ten years or 

every five years, but it probably becomes almost a daily occurrence 

that someone somewhere is going to be suffering the effects of the 

environment on their technological system. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yeah. Well, I mean we saw things like the 

Carrington event back in the early 1900s or earlier—— 

Dr. BAKER. Yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. —1900s. Is there technology available today to increase the warning time of those types of events? 

Dr. BAKER. Yes. As we talked about, by observing the sun that 

we could probably have an idea that a solar storm is coming our 

way. That Carrington event occurred in 1860. The internet of the 

Victorian age was the telegraph system. That was about the only 

technology that could really sense the effects of this. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Has anything of the magnitude of the Carrington 

event occurred since then? 

Dr. BAKER. I mentioned in my testimony that there was an event 

that occurred in 2012 that was probably two or three times stronger than the Carrington event, that it missed the Earth by about a 

week or so, that had that occurred, I had contended—I guess we 

can debate this point—we’d probably still be picking up the pieces 

had that event had occurred a week earlier. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Is that right? Wow. How concerned are you about 

an extreme space weather event taking place during our lifetime? 

And you just said that, 2012, a couple of weeks’ difference and we’d 

be still picking up the pieces. What do you mean by picking up the 

pieces? What would have been the potential implications of that? 

Dr. BAKER. Well, as Dr. Morgan talked about, we don’t have a 

lot of transformers lying around ready to reinstall into our power 
63 

grid. We don’t have a lot of the kinds of backup systems and so on 

ready—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. I don’t know. In Marietta, Ohio, the squirrels 

knockout transformers all the time and—— 

Dr. BAKER. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. But I believe that, again, if 

we think about the worst kind of case scenario and how this would 

propagate through not only the power grid but other aspects of 

technology, I mean that we would probably still be trying to recover 

fully from the effects of those kinds of—you know, the incidents of 

events. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, it’s amazing how many things like this are 

out there that we—that—I daresay that many people have no clue 

how precipitously close we are to a disaster of magnanimous proportions and we don’t even know about it. It’s happening almost 

right under our noses and we don’t know it. 

Dr. BAKER. I think that’s what’s most alarming is the vulnerability that we have and how unaware we typically are about that, 

yes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. All right. Well, Mr. Chairman, I’ve exceeded 

my time. I yield back. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. Well, this is a very important topic, and 

so we also have a gentleman from California, Mr. Takano, who is 

not a member of the subcommittee, but we appreciate his interest 

in being here. He’s a member of the committee, and so I recognize 

you for the final five minutes. 

Mr. TAKANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank my colleague 

from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, for commenting—saying something about the topic I brought up, the line of questioning. 

Dr. Morgan, am I to conclude that—with my question regarding 

microgrids that—and the—your comment about the emphasis—the 

heretofore emphasis on distribution and not enough attention 

maybe on the other side of the equation on diversifying the generation—— 

Dr. MORGAN. The reverse? 

Mr. TAKANO. Excuse me. Go ahead. Clarify what you’re—— 

Dr. MORGAN. The reverse. We have restructured the supply side. 

We have not done too much to restructure the demand side, that 

is the distribution system and the microgrids that might be down 

under the distribution. 

Mr. TAKANO. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. Okay. 

So my question is—and I want to follow up on what Mr. Rohrabacher suggested at the end of his comments about battery technology and—where—how could the federal government—or what 

would be the appropriate role in terms of emphasizing more research in this area? There’s a lot of breakthrough. I just recently 

visited a vanadium battery company. How could this be—is this a 

potential game-changer if we were to make breakthroughs in various types of battery technology and how this would help alleviate 

our vulnerability? 

Dr. MORGAN. Yeah, battery technology is important, and of 

course in California there’s actually mandates to try to get some 

more batteries installed to begin to get practice and to drive things 

down the experience curve. The—I mean and there are a bunch of 

emerging new technologies. Jay Whitacre, for example, on my fac-
64 

ulty has built a company called Aquion, which has a very nontoxic 

battery that’s basically you can drink the electrolyte that could 

be—yeah, it really is. It’s just a—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I’ll stick to beer. 

Dr. MORGAN. Yeah. But—and the DOE is—has some major research in that space. Actually, if you allow me 30 seconds to come 

back to the earlier line of questioning—— 

Mr. TAKANO. Sure. 

Dr. MORGAN. —with respect to interconnectedness, solar mass 

ejections is—are a high-latitude event. That is you’ll notice that all 

of the examples were at, you know, in Canada or in South Africa, 

but if you have an event like that and it causes a big disruption, 

the power system is interconnected, so another thing you can do to 

limit the propagation of a problem is to be concerned about how do 

you avoid propagating disturbances if you take out, say, the power 

system across the northern tier of the United States and Canada? 

How do you avoid that then subsequently propagating through the 

rest of the Eastern interconnect or the Western interconnect? More 

likely, the Eastern interconnect given the geology. I’m sorry. Go 

ahead. 

Mr. TAKANO. What can we do more to—I know the DOE supports 

the battery research, but could we be doing more? And is this a 

wise place to kind of do more—provide more support? 

Dr. MORGAN. Well, I mean I mentioned Jay Whitacre. That work 

has largely been supported with venture monies, and so you want 

to make sure that you continue to provide a hospitable environment for those sorts of investments. But I think almost anybody 

today who has a really good battery idea and has begun to demonstrate it in the laboratory isn’t going to have a lot of problems 

finding substantial capital to build a firm. 

Mr. TAKANO. Well, great. But related to the entire topic of today’s hearing, better battery storage, energy storage technologies 

could also be part of a strategy to address—— 

Dr. MORGAN. Yes. I mean it’s clear there is no one-size-fits-all. 

As we restructure the system, we’re going to need a portfolio of 

strategies and technologies, and support for the critical issues all 

across that space are important. 

The Office of Electricity at the DOE has, for reasons I’ve never 

quite understood, long been rather neglected and has been modestly funded, and so that would be one place to start. And I don’t 

know why it is, but OMB has always often sort of neglected it as 

well. I think that’s a mistake and I think that this committee 

maybe ought to explore that or these committees ought to maybe— 

subcommittees should explore it a bit more. 

Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Chairman, I would endorse that suggestion, 

also my colleague’s suggestion, Mr. Rohrabacher’s suggestion about 

more work on what’s going on in the private sector and the public 

sector in battery storage and energy storage technology. 

Chairman LOUDERMILK. I thank the gentleman. And I mean this 

needs to be an ongoing discussion that we’re having. 

And again, I thank the witnesses for taking time here today and 

for the Members being with us. We do have another briefing to get 

to regarding energy and the threats that we’re facing. 
65 

So, as we’ve seen, as America’s aging electric grid transitions to 

the smart grid, we must make sure that we are effectively protecting it, and as we’ve seen, we’ve got a long way to go. And as 

I’ve heard today, while the grid has been resilient, vulnerabilities 

remain. Given the importance of the electric grid in everyday life, 

addressing these vulnerabilities is paramount to ensuring the safety and security of our nation. 

To the Members, the record will remain open for two weeks for 

additional comments and written questions from Members. The 

witnesses are excused and the hearing is adjourned. Again, thank 

you. 

[Whereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] 

(67) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
68 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Mr. Richard Lordan 
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70 
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73 
74 
75 
76 

Responses by Ms. Nadya Bartol 
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78 
79 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
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Responses by Dr. Daniel N. Baker 
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88 
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90 
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Responses by Dr. M. Granger Morgan 
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(95) 

Appendix II 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
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STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALLEN B. WEST
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STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY DR. GEORGE H. BAKER
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Æ