Another power substation attack; Dec 25 2022; Pierce County, Washington 6

[FacEngrPE]

Four substations attacked in Washington state, leaving thousands without power Location: Pierce County, Washington

Over 7,000 left without power after three Pierce County substation facilities attacked; KTVB

Vandals hit fourth Pierce County substation in Christmas Day attacks; Dec. 26, 2022 at 10:14 am Updated Dec. 26, 2022 at 12:11 pm

 

[TugboatEng]

Well, at least nobody noticed the loss of a solar plant.

 

[bacon4life]

I have to insert my card before the door opens. That's certainly a cheap solution for a transformer building, but they don't even have that.

Usually utility substation transformers are only placed inside buildings are in very dense urban or industrial areas. I assume nearly all of these have real-time intrusion detection systems in place. Adding a building around transform adds millions, or perhaps tens of millions of dollars of cost. Although perhaps obvious, that card reading systems at a critical component that must be designed and maintained to operate for the duration of any expected outage without external power or external communications.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

They certainly do notice a wind or solar plant going down. A wind farm going off line in the UK nearly took down the whole grid a few years back. And it going off line was triggered by a spinner going rogue.

 

[1503-44]

True. The better pipelines put their compressors inside buildings. The cheap companies use shelter roofs and those that don't care leave them out in the open. Same compressors, same capacities, good weather, or bad, rain, snow, or shine, doesn't seem to matter that much. Basically those that do care do it, those that don't, don't. Compressors are $10k/Hp. That's where the 40-60 millions are. Couple 100k for a building is "cheap insurance", i.e. < $1%/yr.

Pretty hard to argue about a few batteries...? You got to have a monthly service check on an elevator, with card readers, motors, control panels, telephone, yet residential apt buildings aren't discouraged from buying them. A transformer yard can't build a CMU wall around the more critical stuff, or a building with card reader? Hard to believe. Airbnb can.

Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

you don't need a building with a roof. We have red brick walls round urban sub stations in the UK. Red brick walls last approximately 30 seconds against a 100kg Royal Marine with his body as a demolition tool. A more thought full sapper with a sledge hammer will make a loop hole in 15 seconds.

But there are very few guns about. And no automatic high velocity military grade weapons. The firearms which would have a chance of doing damage are owned by none nutter owners that are mostly kept in armouries and are work tools or club target weapons. We just don't have people wandering around with the firepower to do this.

In the Baltics they have the firepower in houses, absolutely no protection around the sub stations including a fence, you can go touch them if you are stupid enough. But they are left well alone.

 

[CWB1]

We've seen what companies do to justify not doing anything

By that logic, prisons full of murderers prove that everybody other than myself should cease to exist for my safety. FWIW tho, profit motive and loss-protection are two vastly different things. If there was a legitimate business case for hardening substations then non-PoCo owners/consumers would commonly harden their sites, but they dont bc only 99.99% reliability is acceptable.

Tug's joke is very true stateside. Renewables here usually fall into NIMBY, are located rurally, and often idle with zero demand. Commercial wind parks here are measured by availability, not actual production.

This discussion is reminiscent of the push for internet to become a regulated monopoly. Locally we spent millions hanging publicly-funded fiber which ISPs have no interest in using, so now we must grant a monopoly to force one. Somehow that's supposed to generate a profit for the city and provide service better than our current cheap, fast, reliable cable network. Its also rather ironic given that deregulation of power and gas successfully lowered prices here.

 

[dik]

???

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik