Cybersecurity

Taking its first major step to act on President Trump’s May 1 executive order (EO) to limit foreign bulk power equipment transactions in the U.S., the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a definitive list of six foreign “adversaries” that pose threats to the U.S. bulk power system (BPS): China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, […]

Some experts have predicted there will be as many as 50 billion connected devices in service by the end of this year. That number basically includes all of the equipment, sensors, and gadgets around the world that together make up the internet of things (IoT). But how are they all connected, what allows them to […]

After Superstorm Sandy pummeled the great State of New Jersey in 2012, more than two million households were without power, many for close to two weeks. A silver lining is that this disaster occurred in the fall, after the heat of summer and before the onset of freezing conditions. With Sandy, New Jersey and the […]

Distributed control systems (DCSs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) have been commonplace in power plants for decades, but the technology has not been stagnant. Today’s systems are beginning to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to take plant control to a whole new level. To get an insider’s perspective on how these systems […]

Declaring a national emergency over threats to the U.S. bulk power system (BPS), President Trump in an executive order (EO) on May 1 issued a sweeping ban on transactions by U.S. persons for electric equipment sourced abroad if the U.S. government determines they pose undue security risks. Because foreign adversaries are “increasingly creating and exploiting […]

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced many companies to change the way they conduct operations. Leaders have had to divide employees into essential and non-essential categories. Essential employees must report to

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to delay the implementation of seven reliability standards that relate to cybersecurity, training, disturbance monitoring and reporting, generator relay loadability, and coordination of protection systems for performance during faults. In an April 6 filing to FERC, NERC noted the rules […]

With the growth of distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, wind turbines, battery energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and demand response technology, distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) are becoming increasingly important for utilities. Brad Williams, vice president of Industry Strategy with Oracle Utilities was a guest on The POWER Podcast. He touched on a […]

Federal regulators with oversight over U.S. power matters have issued a series of actions over recent weeks to respond to the potentially devastating impact that COVID-19, the new coronavirus, could have on North American power workforce operations and reliability. POWER will update this post regularly with COVID-19 response news and documents from federal and state […]