INVESTIGATES: ‘Creating chaos’ How vulnerable are local electrical substations to attack?

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Action News Jax investigates found local electrical substations that supply power to hundreds of thousands of homes could be vulnerable to attack.

The power companies have known about this threat for at least a decade, but it’s become an even larger problem in the past year with a record number of incidents across the United States as experts say the goal is to create chaos.

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Action News Jax Ben Becker put some of our local substations to the test. Rest assured, we didn’t show the bad guys anything they don’t already know; they’ve proven that over and over again.

“We’ve seen people have this willingness to actually go after infrastructure in a way that they never would before,” said Jon Wellinghoff, former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

He was in charge when a gunfire attack happened in California a decade ago. “It’s very frightening because of the widespread possibility of an outage with the implications of these kinds of attacks.”

SUBSTATION ATTACKS

Action News Jax found the attacks are happening more often. There were 163 reported incidents of physical attacks, vandalism, suspicious activity, and sabotage at power substations in 2022, according to the Department of Energy.

Action News Jax obtained Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office body camera video showing thefts and vandalism at various substations, including one on Wiley Road where suspects cut a hole in a fence and stole $11,000 worth of tools.

Most of the JEA incidents involved stolen scrap metal and tools. In some cases, holes were cut into the fenced-in area to gain access.

In North Jacksonville, someone cut a wooden utility pole with a chain saw last August resulting in three thousand people losing power.

In North Carolina in December, someone shot up two substations leaving approximately 45,000 people without power for four days. The attack hit critical components making it impossible for the utility to re-route electricity.

Why? It’s easy to see in the open-sourced map of the U.S. power grid which is available to anyone online. It shows which substations feed electricity to each of the lines. And if you know

how to read the map, you can see how a coordinated attack on the right substations can knock out power to a whole area.

ON-SITE VISITS

In Downtown Jacksonville, a large swath of power circulates between three substations - Robinwood, Biltmore and Lane.

Action News Jax Investigates paid them a visit in person along with several others - spending time openly recording video, taking pictures and no one ever even asked what we were doing.

Becker took his findings to JEA’s Chief Executive Officer, Jay Stowe. When Becker asked, “Were you guys aware I was there?” Stowe replied, “I don’t know that for sure.” The utility later said no one reported suspicious activity.

“They’re a bunch of different systems that we have in place to monitor what’s going on,” said Stowe. “Some of them have cameras. Some of them are places we patrol periodically. And so, we keep an eye on the system pretty well. And I’m glad you didn’t do anything that would have caused us to react,” said Stowe.

Action News Jax teamed up with our sister stations across the country to visit more than 50 substations in seven states. We wanted to check out the security measures and see what the power companies haven’t done.

Police only showed up once. It was in the Seattle area where attackers hit four substations on Christmas Day. Surveillance video shows a man approaching the equipment with something in his hand. Two minutes later the power went out.

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ALWAYS IMPROVING SECURITY

Wellinghoff said barbed wire fences and security cameras won’t stop a gunfire attack at substations. “I think the first thing they need to do is assess putting in ballistic barriers in front of the critical parts of the infrastructure,” Wellinghoff said.

The good news is it appears Kennedy Generating Station near Tallyrand is heavily secured and provides redundancy to the system.

“Can the security be better?” Becker asked Stowe. “We are always getting better. So, there’s always things we can do to improve,” said Stowe.

Becker also asked Stowe why electric substations are built in open spaces, sitting like easy targets. Stowe said they take into account the location of water and wastewater plants and neighbors who are being served.

Becker also reached out to two other local utilities about their security measures:

Clay Electric

“Clay Electric works to prevent outages and protect the reliability of our entire electric distribution system from natural and manmade threats.

Maintaining and enhancing the security of our electric grid is a top priority for Clay Electric. In addition to security fencing, routine physical inspections are conducted at all our substations. Besides the physical inspections, we have installed monitored security cameras at substations. We continuously evaluate the technology used to protect and maintain both the security and the reliability of our distribution system.”

Florida Power & Light

“We recognize that millions of Floridians rely on FPL every day for reliable electricity, and we take our duty to serve them extremely seriously. That’s why FPL has a robust, 24/7 security plan to continuously monitor and protect our critical infrastructure throughout Florida. Given recent incidents across the U.S., our team is on heightened alert and in constant contact with law enforcement. As always, we remind customers that if they “see something, say something” by reporting any suspicious activity to local law enforcement. Because of the sensitive and critical nature of grid security, we do not discuss specific aspects of our security plan.”

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