Dive Brief:
- Developing a "culture of resilience" is needed to ensure the power grid is protected from outages caused by superstorms or cyberattacks, said PJM Interconnection President and CEO Terry Boston.
- "There's no silver bullet to ensure resilience for the grid. What we need is more like silver buckshot that encompasses multiple approaches," Boston said at PJM's Grid 20/20 conference in Philadelphia earlier this week. "Resilience is a learning process, and it is best when we learn from others' handling of crises."
Dive Insight:
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur said "We can build a culture of resilience using the same techniques and tools that industry has used for years to build a culture of safety." She said creating a culture of resilience is akin to the acceptance travelers have of going to the airport two hours early and taking off shoes at security. She said people would have scoffed at that before the September 11th terrorist attacks but they understand the necessity now.
Tom Ridge, the former secretary of homeland security, said the Internet has changed fundamentally the nature of the threat to the nation's power grid. "The strength of the Internet," Ridge said, "is its ubiquity and so is its weakness. The ability to use that digital world for good or for harm is something we will have to live with forever."