To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. Crews begin work to restore power to Picher, Okla., on May 12, 2008 following a devastating tornado. The Department of Energy plays a significant homeland security role in supporting private sector utilities as they maintain the nation's energy grid. Register online today for exclusive online content and eNewsletters AP PHOTO/SUE OGROCKI format that they can use. EDER personnel then try to set priorities for restoring infrastructure, generally calling attention to critical needs such as hospitals and identifying other facilities that are ready and able to receive electricity and other restored services. “We try to work with our private sector partners to get their facilities back on in a meaningful and manageable way,” Willgang commented. “Everybody wants their stuff on right away, but having collected the information and being involved in the situational awareness, we know who is ready and who is not ready.” Several regulations provide the DoE with its authority to assist with the restoration of energy infrastructure in response to disasters—most notably the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. When activated, EDER works with FEMA to address energy sector problems under the National Response Framework. As the months passed last fall, EDER was involved in providing electricity to the displaced residents of mobile homes and temporary housing. At press time, EDER still had three people in Texas performing such jobs. EDER perhaps has about 120 people ready to assist in the event of a natural disaster or man-made emergency. Those people include a regional coordinator and a backup for each region, as well as 100 subject matter experts ranging from scientists to engineers to emergency responders. During Hurricane Katrina, EDER deployed up to 50 of its people throughout Louisiana. In situations where the damage is so severe or widespread, EDER often teams up with the US Coast Guard to survey the damage from its helicopters and boats. To protect or repair Professor Ross Baldick was giving a talk in Columbus, Ohio, in 2006 when an attendee in the audience observed that any group of terrorists with shotguns could cause a lot of damage to US electrical grids by walking around and shooting it in the right places. “I really don’t mean to be frivolous about it, but they really are essentially indefensible infrastructure,” said Baldick, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. The Department of Energy generally agrees that it is extremely difficult and cost-prohibitive to actually harden or protect such infrastructure. So it and some other grantees provided research funds to Baldick and other experts from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif., to develop “optimization techniques for analyzing the security and resilience of electrical power grids against disruptions caused by terrorist attacks,” according to the NPS Web site. TheVulnerability of Electric Power Grids Analysis Project resulted in a tool managers could use to assess the benefits of repairs given empirical numbers about their costs. The tool helps to determine the advantages to hardening electrical infrastructure versus repairing it when emergencies occur. “I suspect a mixture of both is relevant, in particular in high value places like electric substations,” Baldick told HSToday. “There is probably value in making the barbed wire fence harder to break through than it is currently. You have geographically concentrated assets there with relatively easy-to-breech defenses. On the other hand, with a transmission line, which might be 100 miles long, you simply aren’t going to be able to build a fence along it. Typically, it is in a corridor that is undefended.” The Electric Power Research Institute heads an ongoing effort to develop generic spares for power transformers used in electric power equipment, Baldick noted. Typically, different power companies use different transformers with different ratings for various configurations of equipment. But a generic spare that could provide temporary relief HSToday Magazine | March 2009 41