In January, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) launched its new Building a Better Grid initiative. The DoE’s stated intention for the program is to create a more robust transmission system that will restore the nation’s electrical grid through expanded access and greater resilience. The initiative emphasizes supporting generation and distribution of clean energy, and hardening the grid to sustain against physical and cyber attacks, and increasing extreme weather patterns.
As new and more modern equipment is installed to meet these resilience requirements, that equipment will be enabled with more network-connected components. Those connected devices will increase the data available from these sites, requiring cybersecurity that can both protect the facilities and allow the data needed to report on the status of the equipment to flow. That resilience should carry down to the substation and smart grid levels, which are the heart of local power distribution.
Read Dennis’s full article on POWER Magazine’s website.