U.S. Congress Looks to Protect Grid

Tuesday, 15 June 2010 11:56

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Concern over potential attacks on the nation’s electrical grid has prompted Unites States legislators to approve The Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act, better known as The GRID Act. If signed into law, the legislation would give the President sweeping new emergency powers over the U.S electrical grid. In addition, the bill would mandate widespread improvements in the electrical distribution system nationwide.

The Association for Federal Information Resources Management, AFFIRM, recently hosted a panel at George Washington University about the smart grid which featured some of the top federal officials heading up a special smart grid task force. Eric Lightener, director of the Federal Smart Grid Task Force at the Department of Energy, said one of the biggest challenges for federal officials to make the grid smarter is the lack of interoperability. Currently, there are no common standards that would allow electrical grid management systems to work with each other.

“Right now, the way it works, those standards don’t exist,” Lightener stated. “Equipment made by GE (General Electric) doesn’t talk to equipment from another vendor, so it’s not optimized at all, it’s very much the wild west out there. We’re trying to bring some efficiencies and consistency by developing some standards and interoperability.”

David Wollman, leader of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology Smart Grid team, agreed that protecting the nation electrical grid depends on developing common operational standards. “All the voltage, and current and resistance units that are used for instrumentation are all traceable back to our laboratories. Standards are also documentary standards; these are the protocols and procedures of how to accomplish certain tasks and functions.”

Nick Sinai, the Federal Communication Commission’s Energy and Environment Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative noted that the smart grid is actually part of the congressionally mandated National Broadband Initiative. “Broadband is not just an entertainment and communications mechanism,” he explained, adding even before the recent passage of The Grid Act, lawmakers mandated that development of the smart grid be tied in with long-term efforts to protect the nation’s cyber-security infrastructure.