January 15, 2019—Lake Wylie Pilot Study Lessons

We plan to share lessons learned in our Lake Wylie Pilot Study throughout South and North Carolina and then to the rest of the nation. Yesterday’s discussions in Austin, Texas set the stage sharing those lessons outside the southeast; in this case outside the Eastern Interconnection of the Nation’s electric power grid. Since Texas has its own Interconnection, lessons learned in Texas will benefit the Eastern and Western Interconnections of the nation’s grid.

I’ve written about our Lake Wylie Pilot Study for the past couple of years. Click here for links to those messages, and especially here for the most comprehensive recent description in my December 18, 2018 message, on which I will build this week. I drafted this message in preparing for yesterday’s important meeting in Austin Texas to support Texas State Senator Bob Hall who is seeking to persuade the Texas Legislature to undertake initiatives to assure the Texas grid is protected, including against an existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

Senator Hall and I both were USAF officers in the 1960s who worked to harden the Minuteman system against nuclear weapons effects, including EMP. So, Bob well understands the nature of the threat and what is needed to harden against it. His problem today is complicated because the issue became so highly classified that few today understand it. In his efforts to persuade his colleagues in the Texas legislature to take steps to harden the Texas grid, his problem is two-fold: To persuade them that the threat is real and secondly that they can take sound initiatives to protect Texans against it.

Yesterday’s meeting was Bob’s third attempt with the Texas legislature that only meets every other year. That was the context for my joining others, including former CIA Director Ambassador Jim Woolsey who led the discussion in a key interview. The nature of the existential threat was the focus in one panel; my objective in another was to explain how what we are doing in South Carolina to “address that threat from the bottom up” is pertinent for Texas.

I assign the top priority of our efforts across the nation to assuring our nuclear power plants are viable in the case of a major electric grid blackout. As illustrated on the left below, the winds could expose the entire nation to any radiation release from these ~100 nuclear plants, most of which are in the Eastern Interconnection of the grid. Note that Texas has two nuclear plants; and Texas has its own interconnection, so lessons learned there may have implications for the other two major ones. I am most focused on the Eastern Interconnection that produces most of the nation’s electricity, extends westward to include portions of New Mexico and includes most of the nation’s nuclear power plants. Click here for a description of the nation’s interconnections.

Our top priority is to keep these nuclear plants safe as is required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and next to restore them as quickly as possible to provide electricity. They provide about 20-percent of the nation’s electricity — and over half of the electricity in South Carolina. In case of a major blackout, they shut down to prevent the damage to runaway generation turbines, and they and their spent fuel rods in nearby pools must be cooled, e.g., at least initially by diesel generators as long as there is fuel to power them.

In our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, Duke Energy’s Wylie Hydroelectric Power Plant can provide this needed power to Duke’s Catawba Nuclear Power Plant indefinitely — via a hardened portion of grid connecting the two. (See the figure next to the first paragraph above.) Duke Energy’s top priority is to assure this connection is viable via its own hardened power plants and Transmission/Distribution infrastructure. Once a sufficient portion of the surrounding grid can provide the needed load for operations, the Wylie plant also can provide sufficient power to restart the Catawba nuclear plant to provide electricity to that “island” in the grid.

However, this essential step does not assure electricity will be provided to others not served by Duke grid infrastructure, e.g., many if not most living in Rock Hill — one of the largest SC cities (and a suburb of Charlotte, home of Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters) or others in most of the rest of York County.

Rock Hill is served by the Rock Hill Utility Company and the rest of York County by the York Electric Cooperative (co-op) Company. They, like about 40 other Municipal Utility and co-op companies serve most of the citizens of South Carolina via “Distribution” grid infrastructure that is connected to the “Generation” and “Transmission” portions of the grid.

While the descriptors “Transmission” and “Distribution” seem subtly different as describing pathways for electricity, the substance of that distinction at many levels is very important.

As illustrated above, “Transmission” lines (in blue) carry very high voltage — nominally over 100 kilovolts (KV) — electricity over long distances that is then stepped down by Extra High Voltage (EHV) Transformers to lower voltage “Distribution” lines (in green) that deliver electricity to many customers, perhaps most notably to our private citizens — but also to many commercial and other customers that provide essential support to our citizens — like hospitals, water-wastewater infrastructure, essential communications — especially to support emergency management operations, etc.

Most if not all of our military bases also get their electricity this way, through the Distribution grid infrastructure. Nevertheless, the Department of Defense has taken little if any responsibility for protecting the nation’s electric grid — the “powers that be” have, more or less, assigned that responsibility to the Department of Homeland Security, which does not consider it deserves a high priority among its other responsibilities or areas of competence.

This disaggregation is only one of the causes for the dysfunctional nature of the Federal Government in addressing the existential threat to the electric grid. And that is why President Trump should end the fact that no-one below him is today responsible for assuring the entire electric grid is protected from existential threats — subject for another day.

Another issue: The regulatory world makes an important distinction between the Distribution infrastructure and the rest of the grid…the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) deals only with the “bulk power grid,” defined to consist only of the Generation and Transmission components. Moreover, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has primary oversight over the Nuclear power plants, which are a top priority concern, as noted above.

Distribution infrastructure is regulated at the state level. And as best I can tell, all of this complex structure is managed mostly by a variety of committees — from the local to the federal level. And no one is in charge of assuring the system functions under major stress, such as could be the consequence of an EMP attack — or a major solar storm. Have you ever seen any innovative task managed by committee, let alone a gaggle of committees?

Consider the complexity of assuring a viable integrated effort to harden our national grid, given the likely variety across our fifty states and the associated variation among reportedly about 3500 municipal utility and co-op companies across the nation responsible for providing electricity to the private sector — hospitals, water-wastewater, other utilities, businesses, people, industry, transportation, etc. Imagine life without electricity!

Our Lake Wylie Pilot Study is seeking, in concert with Duke Energy engineers, to understand these management distinctions from the bottom up within South and North Carolina — which we expect will have significant implications around the nation. Also we hope to understand important technical issues, e.g., associated with assuring viable “Step-up” and “Step-down” transformers in the case of an EMP event. They take many months to replace and are hand-made mostly overseas. Notably, they have had little if any significant testing against exposure to likely EMP threat levels.

Understanding the importance of assuring the viability of the “Distribution” portion of the grid is the primary current focus of our “Bottom-up” strategy initially begun with Rock Hill, the fourth largest city in South Carolina and a suburb of Charlotte, home of Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters.

Rock Hill’s Assistant City Manager, an Electrical Engineer, has been very supportive in helping us engage other key Rock Hill Municipal Utility managers of key grid infrastructure, including the Electric Utility Director and the lead Engineer for the hospital that serves Rock Hill, the rest of York County and others nearby.

We are also working with the manager of the York County co-op, who also has supported our effort in providing information on critically important infrastructure, including that essential to satisfying the water-wastewater needs throughout York County, including Rock Hill infrastructure.

Based on their cooperation, Dr. George Baker (one of the nation’s top EMP experts) is working up cost estimates for hardening the top priority Rock Hill and York County infrastructure — and providing to Duke engineers information to assure its viable Transmission infrastructure is linked to the Rock Hill and York County co-op Distribution infrastructure .

Duke is also considering the anticipated costs of assuring their Generation and Transmission infrastructure is hardened.

As noted in the figure below, we are working with leaders who are already actively involved with about 40 other municipal utility and co-op companies throughout South Carolina — so they can help us share our lessons learned throughout all of South Carolina.

York County is the highlighted SC county in the above map. The right hand highlighted NC county is Gaston County, where, like Rock Hill, Gastonia customers are supported by a municipal utility company; and the rest of the Gaston county is served by co-op electricity. Thus, we should be able to share easily with them our Rock Hill/York County lessons learned. And Duke Energy’s Allen Coal Plant in Gaston County will be integrated into those considerations.

Then we plan to consider Mecklenburg County, which includes several Duke power plants and over half of the population of the “Core Counties” around Charlotte, the home of Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters. Almost 80 percent of electricity for these “Core Counties” is produced by Duke nuclear plants.

Once these activities are completed, we intend to next include all ten counties of the Charlotte Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), where Duke power plants produce almost all of the electricity supplied to citizens through a combination of Duke, Utility and co-op Distribution infrastructure. (I forgot to mention that key infrastructure is also produced by other companies that are not responsible for the transmission of electricity to our citizens. More for another day.)

Then our plan is to take the lessons learned throughout South and North Carolina and to other areas of the United States.

Yesterday’s discussions in Texas were an initial step in that direction. And we will be reporting on the fallout in the future. Notably, a “google search” indicates that Texas also has about 40 municipal utility and co-op companies—about the same as South Carolina. But there appears to be many more companies responsible for the generation and transmission of electricity that feeds these 40 Distribution companies.

Bottom Lines.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study seeks to produce a plan and associated costs to assure from the bottom-up a viable electric power grid for South and North Carolina, which can be extended to the rest of the nation.

Texas could be a first test of this prospect, which would extend lessons learned not only to another state but throughout another Grid Interconnection that could yield lessons pertinent to the Eastern and Western Interconnections.

It should compose an appropriate model to be included in the response to President Trump’s anticipated Executive Order directing the executive branch “powers that be” to protect the nation’s electric power grid. And please, please put someone in the White House in charge!

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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