Major San Francisco power outage caused by one breaker in one substation – what are the implications?

by Bill Fester on April 25, 2017

in Industries, Power, Systems

At approximately 9am on April 21, 2017, ONE breaker failed in PG&E’s Larkin Street substation. This ONE breaker in ONE substation brought the city of San Francisco to its knees.  The implications are numbing, particularly considering all of the promises PG&E has made to the California PUC after the San Bruno natural gas pipeline rupture.

Given the walled enclosure, a physical attack such as the rifle attack against the PG&E Metcalf substation would not be possible. However, a cyber attack could certainly succeed. Not only could it succeed, a cyber attack could cause physical damage to the targeted breaker and/or transformer.

 

Read the rest of the story at Control Global

by Joseph M. Weiss

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