We are now at a critical juncture with the nation’s energy and transmission infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure has been in maintenance mode for many years, and has fallen out of step with the advancing technologies, as well as the ever-increasing cyber threats.
Dependencies on the nation’s power grid is at an all-time high, with mounting demands in the financial, commercial, manufacturing, and technology sectors. The critical need to protect the power system infrastructure, providing the capabilities to monitor and control current situations, analyze and adapt to changing conditions, as well as institute the necessary security safeguards will help facilitate timely recovery from a variety of potential disruptions. Disruptions may be the result of natural disasters, equipment failures, accidental occurrences, or malicious activities. Enhanced protection of the nation’s energy and transmission systems is paramount to ensure adequate power is available to support the increasing demands.
A significant challenge in providing the means to monitor, analyze, and control power systems is establishing secure and efficient processes to support data acquisition, analysis, and correlation among the many power providers within the industry. Acceptance and implementation of power data exchange standards will help to minimize data contention, as well as facilitate a progressive transition to a data-driven power system infrastructure.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has an ambitious initiative to strengthen the resilience on the nation’s energy systems, and has identified the North American Energy Resilience Model (NAERM) as a potential solution. NAERM’s focus will be on national-scale energy planning and real-time situational awareness capabilities based on rigorous and quantitative assessment, prediction, and improvement. Additionally, NAERM will enhance these capabilities to ensure reliable and resilient energy delivery across multiple energy sectors while considering a range of large-scale, emerging threats. For more information regarding the NAERM, please see NAERM Report.
