vulnerabilities

NERC recently issued reliability standards in response to the potential for geomagnetic disturbances to disrupt operations and possibly damage assets. The power industry appears to have placed undue emphasis on GMD’s threat to transformers. Our studies and those by others have underscored the value to transmission organizations in assessing their vulnerability to harmonics.

The latest fallout from the April 2013 Metcalf incident: the unprecedented assault with high-powered rifles on PG&E’s Metcalf substation, in Silicon Valley, which disabled 17 of 20 large transformers.