The U.S. Energy Grid Is Increasingly Vulnerable to Cyberattacks

The U.S. grid’s vulnerability to cyberattacks has grown, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has warned.

According to the regulator, the number of vulnerability points in the grid had grown from between 21,000 and 22,000 at the end of 2022 to 23,000-24,000 at the end of 2023.

"It's very hard to keep pace with addressing all those vulnerabilities," NERC senior vice president Manny Cancel said, as quoted by Reuters.

Geopolitical events such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza tend to lead to an increase in cyberattacks on the U.S. grid, the NERC also said, and so do elections. The regulator warned that there will probably be a further jump in attempts on the grid, with Cancel saying "We're going to be very vigilant during this current election cycle."

Cyber threats are one of the risks that the U.S. grid has seen increase substantially in recent years. The other is blackouts as more so-called distributed generation capacity comes online. That’s wind and solar installations that only operate when there is sunshine or wind, and that need backup from dispatchable capacity to avoid blackouts.

Last year in May, the NERC warned that as much as two-thirds of the American grid was at risk of electricity shortfalls as a result of the combination of extreme weather expectations and the too-fast replacement of baseload generation with intermittent sources.

Increased, rapid deployment of wind, solar, and batteries have made a positive impact,” Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of Reliability Assessments, said at the time. 

“However, generator retirements continue to increase the risks associated with extreme summer temperatures, which factors into potential supply shortages in the western two-thirds of North America if summer temperatures spike.”

Wind and solar installations, besides intermittent, are also hackable, representing more new vulnerability points on the grid.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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