Xfmrs Shot Up in Silicon Valley (2013) - Any More Info?

[amurray]

This happened a while ago so may have already been discussed, but I could not find any thread. The IEEE had a story recently about several (17) transformers that were shot at in Silicon Valley CA. The story says that 17 transformers shot but no outage. I've been trying to figure out how that is possible. Were they spares? Could it be 17 bushing? Just wondering what others know/think.

Thanks
Andy

 

[itsmoked]

Silicon Valley has one of the most redundant supplies in the world. If a semiconductor fab loses power, for even a second, most of the wafers in production are toast.

The bullets mostly just punctured the transformers so their cooling oil started bleeding out. They didn't appear to damage the windings. Silicon Valley was asked to severely curtail energy usage for a while.

What really annoyed me was the fiber cutting. Our town, clear on the other side of a mountain range, and completely "unrelated" to the region attacked, 40 miles away as the crow-flies, lost all 911 service which resides in our downtown and also web service for several days. How screwed up is that?

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[bacon4life]

There are seven transformer banks at the site consisting of 18 single phase units, 1 three phase bank and 2 spare single phase units.

 

[amurray]

Ok, this fills in a lot more of the story. I am not use to single-phase transformers at substations so I missed that. So the units with coolant loss I assume would still trip out/taken off-line, but they have enough redundancy that with multiple units taken off no load loss.

Thanks
Andy

 

[racookpe1978]

There is (supposedly) a lot more interest in this event from the "deliberate sabotage" aspect (national security level/anti-terrorist level) of the shooting and the weapons used, but I have am, frankly, skeptical about the effectiveness of seeing anything but an expensive and useless "bureaucratic overkill" type reaction that only serves to harm the power industry from anybody or any agency connected in any way to today's Washington.
2010's Washington.
2008's Washington or 2001's Washington for that matter.

 

[tld11]

Regarding Regulator reaction, there is a new fast-tracked NERC standard being promulgated in short order whose purpose is 'To identity and protect Transmission stations and Transmission substations, and their associated primary control centers, that if rendered inoperable or damaged as a result of a physical attack could result in widespread instability, uncontrolled separation, or Cascading within an Interconnection.' It's too early to tell how much work this will be for the industry.

On

http://www.nerc.com

search CIP-014-1 or Physical Security.