October 8, 2019—Lake Wylie Pilot Study Status

“Critical infrastructure keeps our food fresh, our houses warm, our trade flowing, and our citizens productive and safe. The vulnerability of U.S. critical infrastructure to cyber, physical and electromagnetic attacks means that adversaries could disrupt military command and control, banking and financial operations, the electrical grid and means of communication.” ~President Donald Trump, identifying the most serious existential threats to Americans in his Dec. 18, 2017 National Security Strategy statement

It is difficult to state more succinctly this urgent problem, and defining a problem is the first step to solving it. President Trump’s next important step to address the federal government’s lethargic efforts to protect the nation’s critical civil infrastructure — particularly the electric power grid — was his March 26, 2019 Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats.”

Click here for that important document that directed the National Security Council staff to lead a “whole of government” response to address the existential threat posed by natural or man-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran include in their military doctrine. Click here for the reports of the congressional EMP Commission that are the most authoritative source of information on the threat and how to protect against it.

The federal government is, to be generous, dysfunctional in addressing this existential threat. Thus, it is important to consider how to address these threats from the “bottom up.”

If enough citizens gain an understanding of these vulnerabilities and how they can be affordably addressed, then they may awaken Washington to act more effectively. Click here for my May 4, 2017 testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that acknowledged this condition and emphasized:

The slow pace of federal and state efforts to counter the existential threats to the electric power grid — particularly from manmade and natural EMP threats;
How to protect the grid was learned by the Department of Defense (DoD) decades ago, and no technical reason prevents using that knowledge to protect the grid;
Ignorance, resulting from over-classification of that information and other political constraints, has frustrated governmental and private efforts to apply these known solutions to protect the nation’s electric power grid;
A “bottom-up” approach in York County, South Carolina is providing a very affordable precedent that can be exploited by other counties in South and North Carolina and throughout the United States.

Some Key Factors for the Lake Wylie Pilot Study and Beyond

Almost five years ago, the “Lake Wylie Pilot Study” began such a “bottom-up” approach, giving priority to the interests of local authorities responsible for assuring the safety, security and viability of the citizens of York County, SC by providing electricity for its most important critical civil infrastructure. It involves engineers from Rock Hill Utility and York Electric Cooperative (co-op) companies and Duke Energy, LLC.

These efforts began when I met with the Chairman of Clemson University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department to identify graduates employed by Duke Energy — one of the nation’s largest energy companies, if not its largest, with whom to address the EMP threat to the grid.

Thanks to a meeting arranged by a Clemson professor, Duke engineers and senior managers agreed on a “bottom-up” effort to assure the viability of the grid around Lake Wylie, home for three Duke Energy power plants on the Catawba River that runs between North and South Carolina. (See the above figure.)

Our joint efforts were fueled by subsequent meetings with leaders of York County, home of Duke Nuclear and Hydroelectric Power plants, and key Rock Hill Utility and York Electric engineers. (I am not selling anything to or for Duke, Rock Hill Utility or the York Electric — and would not take money from them if they offered it.)

Rock Hill Utility and York Electric cooperative (co-op) companies provide electricity to almost all York County residents via their “Distribution Grid” infrastructure.

They receive electricity from Duke Energy’s “Transmission Grid” infrastructure that, in turn, receives electricity from various power generation plants, including the Wylie Hydroelectric Power Plant and Catawba Nuclear Power Plant in York County, SC and the Allen Coal Plant in Gaston County, NC as illustrated on the above figure..

While descriptors “Transmission” and “Distribution” seem subtly different since they both are pathways for delivering electricity, that distinction is very important. As illustrated below, “Transmission” lines (in blue) carry very high voltage — nominally over 100 kilovolts (kv) — electricity from Power Generation Plants, stepped-up to high voltage via “step-up transformers” and transmitted over long distances via Transmission lines.

Electricity then is converted to lower voltage via “step-down transformers” to “Distribution” lines (in green) that compose about 90-percent of the nation’s overall grid and about 70-percent of the total investment in Distribution and Transmission lines.

Important to the viability of local citizens is the Distribution Grid infrastructure providing electricity to support hospitals, water-wastewater management and delivery, other utilities, businesses, people, industry, transportation, etc. Imagine life without electricity.

In York County, the Distribution Grid is primarily owned, operated and managed by the Rock Hill Utility and York Electric Co-op companies that provide essential electricity to support most if not all these important functions, which depend upon receiving electricity from the so-called “Bulk Power Grid,” composed of Power Generation Plants and the Transmission Grid.

In considering the York County complement of issues in protecting its Distribution Grid — including its critical dependence upon the Bulk Power Grid, it became clear that a national top priority should be assigned to assuring the viability of the nation’s Distribution Grid. This challenge was evident from our Lake Wylie Pilot Study.

For example, Rock Hill Utility and York Electric co-op engineers were not exchanging essential information with Duke engineers to assure that the York County Distribution Grid is included in Duke’s “island in the Grid” around its York County power plants. That omission, since corrected, could have left top priority York County infrastructure without electricity.

Another troublesome discovery related to how local and federal authorities assess infrastructure needs for a major Rock Hill hospital, especially under EMP threats. One might think such important matters would be addressed directly by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but we found that the hospital engineers primarily engaged with the Department of Health and Human Services, which in turn engages DHS interests via committee arrangements involving all 16 critical infrastructure sectors—a recipe for bureaucratic stagnation. Click here for a listing of these 16 designated sectors.

Such conditions are expected to vary from state-to-state given the operating variations across our fifty states and several thousand companies that manage the nation’s Distribution Grid — and associated regulatory constraints that also vary across the nation.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is responsible for the nation’s Bulk Power Grid (consisting of the nation’s Generation Plants and Transmission infrastructure), but the nation’s Distribution Grid is regulated by 50 state regulatory bodies — that vary from state-to-state.

This disaggregation of regulatory responsibility greatly complicates assuring the viability of the Distribution Grid — which composes 90-percent of the national grid. This legacy of decisions made in the late 1970s and early 1980s needs to be revisited because assuring the viability of the nation’s grid is so important to our national survival — and “details matter” in protecting the grid against EMP effects.

The dispersed authorities of the Federal Government do not help establish this needed integration For example, our military bases get most of their electricity from this Distribution Grid, and the Department of Defense (DoD) has no responsibility for assuring the viability of the grid, as explained in a Pentagon briefing several years ago by Admiral William Gortney, then Commander of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM). He indicated that his responsibility was only in support of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Click here for my April 26, 2016 discussion of Admiral Gortney’s key authoritative public statements and links to pertinent messages and public reports. It was appropriately titled “So, Who’s in Charge?” because no one was then in charge.

This question is still pertinent, even though the President’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order reinforces the logical position that the White House is now charged with responsibility for assuring “whole of government” protection of our most important critical civil infrastructure against electromagnetic threats.

But as of this writing, DHS still places a low priority on protecting the Grid from EMP, though the President’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order directs it to oversee a major portion of future efforts to protect the nation’s critical civil infrastructure, particularly the electric power grid. And DoD is currently examining the role of “microgrids” deployed on-base to provide electricity for those military bases and operations, but with limited utility to providing electricity to surrounding citizens.

In South Carolina, we have a microcosm of this national complexity in that there are two main Bulk Power Grid sources of electricity — Duke Energy and Dominion Energy companies—and about 40 Municipal Utility and Electric Co-op companies that, in addition to Duke Energy and Dominion Energy, manage the SC Distribution Grid Infrastructure.

Anticipated lessons-learned in effectively integrating these complexities from the Lake Wylie Pilot Study is expected to be of broad interest across South and North Carolina, and throughout the nation.

Given these complexities — and others, it is apparent that the entire grid will never be completely hardened with any notable confidence.

Thus, priorities must be assigned. Top priority should be assigned to assuring the safety and viability of our 97 nuclear power plants that produce about 20-percent of the nation’s electricity, half of South Carolina’s electricity and about a third of North Carolina’s electricity. Electricity from these plants is provided beyond South and North Carolina.

This “Islanding” approach to prioritizing what to harden first is like the approach adopted by the DoD in giving top priority to protecting our strategic systems and their supporting command, control and communications systems — an objective central to our Cold War “deterrent” policies.

We hardened little other military infrastructure and essentially no critical civil infrastructure. And so now, we are playing “catch-up” and seeking to apply the same approach to protecting our most critical civil infrastructure.

That consideration led us to place top priority on assuring the viability of our nuclear power plants.

As is evident from the High Frontier webpage, most of our nuclear plants are in the “Eastern Interconnection” of the national Bulk Power Grid — especially along the Eastern Seaboard, but all the way out to Eastern New Mexico. If not kept safe, especially in case of a major grid blackout, they could produce the effects of up to 98 Fukushimas, releasing radiation to be carried around the nation by the wind. If kept safe and are restarted, they would become very important to restoring electricity across the nation.

From the outset of our Lake Wylie planning we noted that before nuclear power plants can be restarted, they and the “grid island” immediately surrounding them must assure sufficient loading conditions to restart a given nuclear power plant. Other power plants also shut down to protect themselves if the grid goes down and they need loading conditions to restart — though less demanding than the nuclear plants.

The most resilient of the power plants are hydroelectric power plants and they can most easily be restarted. When those loading conditions are provided, the Wylie Hydroelectric Power plant can provide several tens of megawatts of power to restart the Catawba nuclear power plant, in particular.

This realty was at the heart of our initial decisions to begin the Lake Wylie Pilot Study. Note, it also includes the Allen Coal Power Plant in Gaston County, NC. I’ll return to this important point in future messages that include our planned next steps beyond York County, SC — especially in exporting the lessons learned into North Carolina.

The top priority we assigned four years ago to assuring the viability of our nuclear plants was reinforced by the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF), formed and led by the USAF Educational and Training Command to respond to requirements stipulated by the then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The EDTF, involving hundreds of scholars, industry government technical experts, and military officers, argued that the proliferation of “efficient but delicate” computers, networks, and other electronic infrastructure leaves the US particularly vulnerable to electromagnetic attacks on a grand scale — particularly from China.

Click here for an August 14, 2019 article on the EDTF’s call for protecting our nation against electromagnetic threats.

In particular, Air University’s November 2018 EDTF’s report called for a “Manhattan Project-like” effort to protect nuclear power sources and other critical civil infrastructure and command posts; to improve training and management; to lead in 5G technologies and networks; and to understand the physical and biological effects of electromagnetic pulses and related attacks. Its August 2019 second report continued this theme, emphasizing all electromagnetic threats while warning that that Americans aren’t worried enough about a massive electromagnetic attack.

Other authoritative reports have also emphasized the likely vulnerability of our nuclear power plants and their cooling water systems that must function following an indefinite grid shutdown to avoid Fukushima-like disasters.

Most notably, the congressional EMP Commission for over 17 years warned Congress and the Executive Branch of the full complement of threats (including to our nuclear power plants) that were then ignored until President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order directing a “whole of government” response to the threat, now being led by the National Security Council.

Click here for Paul Bedard’s August 23, 2019 Washington Examiner article that emphasized “Meltdown” concerns for our 97 nuclear power plants — based largely on the EDTF activities.

Co-located diesel generators provide backup electricity so long as diesel fuel is available, but replenishment of on-site fuel depends upon the availability of electricity and transportation services. Battery power also will used for a period.

Of course, viable communications are essential to managing an appropriate response to a major shutdown of the electric power grid — and our critical civil communications systems are likely also vulnerable.

Notably the 2019 EDTF observed that China owns ~70-percent of rural Americaʼs telecommunications networks and that the U.S. grid is composed of nearly 3000 private companies.

So, Chinaʼs influence could, through strong financial and leadership positions in just its owned companies, compromise/impede U.S. federal efforts to protect the grid — more reason for “bottoms-up” protective efforts. And President Trump’s important engagement on China’s past and continuing activities that threaten all Americans.

Affordable Distribution Grid Hardening Cost Estimates.

Future messages will discuss further the details of how we arrived at our cost estimates, but the bottom line is that we can use the same hardening methods that the DoD has employed for decades to protect our most important military systems against EMP effects to protect the critical civil infrastructure of York County’s Distribution Grid for a one-time cost of less that $100 per citizen of York County and, if paid off in just one year, about one-half of one-percent of York County’s median household annual income. This cost could be spread over several years to accommodate the anticipated scheduled hardening rate.

This cost is clearly affordable — and can be managed from the bottom up — even if Washington continues to obstruct progress and delay the needed leadership that our key authorities are sworn to provide — remember that they are sworn “to provide for the common defense” under the Constitution.

And how to extend this conclusion beyond York County to other SC and NC counties — and beyond is straight forward, and will be discussed in future messages.

We will also include recommendations on how to assure that the achieved hardening should be maintained — and how associated costs should be met.

But thus far, we have focused primarily on the Distribution Grid. To complete the picture for York County, we need to include the protection of the Bulk Power Grid — the Generation Plants and Transmission Lines of York County, owned and operated by Duke Energy.

Including the Bulk Power Grid.

Duke Energy engineers have agreed to perform additional EMP resilience assessments of the Wylie Hydroelectric Power Plant, the Catawba Nuclear Power Plant and associated Transmission Grid that make up the Bulk Power Grid in York County that delivers electricity to the York County Distribution Grid.

This activity will follow the same methodology employed for the York County Distribution Grid and will provide a complete picture for the entire York County Grid — and provide a county-wide model providing a complete picture of the entire York County Grid and the anticipated costs of associated needed hardening. This baseline model can then be extended to other South and North Carolina counties and beyond around the nation.

As noted above, the Wylie Hydroelectric power plant potentially provides great benefits to York County and beyond. Along with needed EMP hardened interconnecting grid, it can provide the essential electricity to Rock Hill and all York County critical civil infrastructure — while also supporting safe cooling water operations of the Catawba Nuclear Power plant and other top priority operations within the neighboring “grid island” that extends into North Carolina and the Allen Coal Power plant in Gaston County. Ensuring the essential Bulk Power Grid is protected to enable black-start throughout the Lake Wylie region is an important part of this planned effort.

Bottom Lines.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study has reached a pivot point in demonstrating how to accomplish a viable assessment and make valid associated costs to assure “from the bottom-up” a viable Distribution Gird to deliver electric power to the citizens of Rock Hill and York County.

Moreover, this cost is clearly affordable. Now the question is how it should/will be paid — and we will be considering the possibilities going forward.

Next, we plan to extend the lessons learned throughout South and North Carolina, and ultimately to the rest of the nation.

This approach 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.

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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[1] Duke Energy will assure that the Catawba plant is viable and can be restarted to support a much larger “island in the grid” than just York County. York County authorities will assure high priority is given to being included in Duke Energy’s grid island plan.