Thomas Popik on grid resiliency

Frank Gaffney: We’re back. We’re joined by Thomas Popik. He is a man I’ve come to know and admire greatly for his expertise about the resiliency or lack there of it of our electric grid. He is the chairman of the Foundation for Resilient Societies. He is a MIT trained engineer and just an incredibly knowledgeable and informed resource on matters involving the security or insecurity of the most critical of our critical infrastructures. He’s always welcome here at Secure Freedom Radio. Tom, good to have you.

Thomas Popik: Thank you Frank. Great to be here.

Frank Gaffney: There was something that came across the wire from the Wall Street Journal yesterday that you’ve actually been warning about for some time. I have the feeling that it is going to catch an awful lot of people, including those most immediately affected by surprise, and presumably intensify concerns about the status of our grid. Talk about what seems to be in the offing now for California.

Thomas Popik: Sure Frank. The most immediate concern is potential rolling blackouts in Southern California this Monday and Tuesday. One of the reasons for these possible rolling blackouts will be a heat wave which will put a lot of load on the electric grid due to air conditioning. But there is another backstory to this. It is a natural gas storage facility called Aliso Canyon. Aliso Canyon sprang a leak and spewed enormous quantities of natural gas into the atmosphere earlier this year. As a result, the capacity of that reservoir is down to about twenty percent of normal. It turns out that a storage facility for natural gas is needed during peak electric grid periods because it takes about twice as much gas to run the electric grid as can be pumped in each day. So that is the reason for immediate concern in California.

Frank Gaffney: What you’ve just said, Tom is gonna be staggering I’m sure to the people who might be affected. Is there any indication at the moment to how high spread these rolling blackouts will be or for how long?

Thomas Popik: There’s been some media articles. There was an article in the LA Times that spoke about a number of counties in southern California basically Los Angeles south to San Diego, so that is a pretty big stretch of southern California. Now that I should say there are various mitigation measures the utilities are trying to execute that may actually prevent the blackouts. But it is a major concern as a matter of fact the California grid operator has predicted up to fourteen days of rolling blackouts this summer due to that situation. But Frank, there is a bigger situation for California electric reliability and I would be happy to talk about that too.

Frank Gaffney: Yeah well I want to get to this. This Aliso Canyon is a symptom of a much larger problem isn’t it? Again, our guest is Thomas Popik of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, and someone who is tracking these sorts of challenges – not just in California but across the country and warning of them with great authority. Give us the bigger picture in California at the moment.

Tom: Sure the bigger picture is the people in California don’t want electric power plants in their backyards that spew all sorts of noxious fumes and carbon dioxide and that kind of thing. So their solution has been to have people in neighboring states have the electric power plants in their backyard and then to import the electricity over very long distance transmission lines. So a matter of fact about a third of California power is actually imported over state line from adjacent areas. Another issue for California, and we spoke to this in regards to Aliso Canyon, is that they have natural gas generation plants but most of that natural gas in imported as well. So in rough numbers, about thirty percent of the power for California is imported from other states. In rough numbers about forty percent of the power for California is generated using imported natural gas. Which means that California is almost entirely dependent upon other states for its energy for electricity. Then when there is some sort of disruption in these long supply lines its causes this situation where there could be rolling blackouts. Now on most days there’s not blackouts and of course I think the people in California, foremost in their minds is how they don’t want pollution or other effects. Really, we need to start thinking about electric grid reliability not just on normal days but on days where we could actually not have electricity.

Frank Gaffney: And Tom as you’ve pointed out I’ve learned so much of this from you, really. The challenge is not simply reliability but it is resiliency. It is making sure that if bad things happen, either at the hands of the enemies of this country or even trough naturally occurring events, there may not be just rolling blackouts but very protracted and widespread disruptions of the power supply, which can have just catastrophic effects. In this regard, Tom talk about this incident that took place at the Metcalf substation outside of San Jose, California back in April of 2013 and what it suggests may be in store not just for California but for other states as well?

Tom: Well certainly Frank. I think is another case of just not in my backyard phenomenon for California. The short story that many people in the public know is that there was a terrorist attack on the Metcalf substation just outside of San Jose. And this substation supplies much of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The terrorist that attacked that substation did so with an AK47 rifle. It appears that they were interrupted mid attack and if they had shot only one more transformer there would have been a blackout. But the backstory here is that people in California don’t like transmission lines apparently and so more and more transmission lines were routed through this single substation, and of course that concentrated the risk and provided the opportunity for the attacks. So again we really need to start thinking about not wanting the electric grid power plants or substations in our backyard but he overall effect on society is going to be if we end up having catastrophic blackouts because of that.

Frank Gaffney: Tom Popik, as you look at this situation and particularly the possibility that even if no one engages in the kind of physical sabotage that you just described it – the Metcalf substation, or cyber warfare against our electric utilities which we know has been happening, or perhaps the most devastating of all of these threats the possible use of EMP against our grid. There is this problem that periodic intense solar storm, so called Carrington event for which I’m told we’re overdue perhaps taking down the grid. Are there practical things that people listening to this program could be urging on their federal representatives and others on down the food chain as well that might mitigate this problem not just of the imminent rolling blackout but the perhaps more permanent one.

Tom Popik: Whenever there is an improvement for electric grid reliability we have to consider the cost. But lets talk about solar storm protection. The cost to protect against solar storms would be less than one dollar per year per American. There’s very inexpensive devices that can be put on transformers to mitigate the effects of solar storms. But lets look at the risk during our children’s lifetimes – the chance that there will be a catastrophic which will bring down the US electric grid is over 50%. So it makes a good financial sense to have this kind of protection and I do urge the people listening to this call to contact their senators and congressmen. And urge that there be this kind of protection required.

Frank Gaffney: Amen. Also I urge you to check out Tom Popik’s extraordinarily valuable materials. Tom, give us your website.

Tom Popik: Oh sure. You can learn much more about resilient societies at www.reselientsocieties.org

Frank Gaffney: Tom Popik, the chairman of the Foundation for Resilient Societies thank you for your service to our country in so many ways, my friend, including visiting us from time to time. Come back soon.