Energy Security Postscript and Next Chapter

Long-time readers of the SGSB might have wondered if they'd ever see another post. Me too. After producing an average of 1+ posts per week since its inception 5 years ago, I cut way back after leaving IBM in 2013 to give myself more time to focus on consulting. And now there's a new development to report.

4 month ago I shuttered my security strategy business and began my first day on the job at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). It's one of the Department of Energy's national labs, and it's the one most squarely positioned at the intersection of energy infrastructure and national security. Let's call that energy security.

My INL title: Senior Cyber & Energy Security Strategist - may sound a little pretentious, but it pretty accurately captures what I was hired to do. If you visit the lab's home page or the INL Twitter feed it seems like nuclear energy research and related nuclear work are its dominant activities. But while nuclear energy research and fuels fabrication were its origin in the 1940's and its historic mission, with the help of its massive and remote test range that includes grid-scale transmission, distribution and communications assets, the lab I just joined does a ton of research and applied work on power and industrial control systems, Smart Grid and wireless communications, cyber and physical security and resilience, renewables, microgrids, energy storage and more.

Nuclear energy R&D, and full nuclear fuel lifecycle work (including non proliferation) will always be a significant part of that nation's requirements, and the INL mission, but nuclear energy is arguably the most reliable portion of our non fossil fuel baseload, but INL is quietly becoming something much more - and more important - than its nuclear legacy might suggest.

Without going into too much detail, the lab's customers now include not just DOE's nuclear energy organizations, but also DOE's renewables, resilience and cyber-physical security components too. DHS has become a major customer, as the lab hosts the ICS-CERT cyber security overwatch function for the US grid and other critical infrastructures, and performs other leading edge cyber and physical security roles as well. DoD is a very large customer too, for energy, security and communications test functions, rounded out by direct work with utilities and energy and telecom technology suppliers.

In short, INL in 2014 is not the lab many people think it is. While it's yet to update its image online, a visit to Idaho Falls quickly confirms that this is one of the nation's preeminent Energy Security lab resources. Nuclear energy is and likely always will be a key element, but without making much noise about it, INL has become so much more, and I'm very very lucky to be a part of it.

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Postscript to the Postscript post: Though my blogs are in suspended animation, I continue to speak in public, and albeit more frequently and tersely, on Twitter @andybochman. As the Twitter profile reveals, I continue to work out of my home office in Boston while hitting the road most often for DC, and of course, now, Idaho.

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Major SPIDERS (DOD Secure Microgrid) Update

This post just in from Mr. Harold Sanborn, Program Manager at Construction Engineering Research Lab (CERL), US Army and technical manager for the SPIDERS Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD).  I've removed most of the defense industry speak from a longer version you can find on the DOD Energy Blog.  FYI SPIDERS = an ongoing DOD distributed energy program and the acronym stands for Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security. ab

Here's Harold:

SPIDERS Phase I has finished the "history tour" as we codify and publish the lessons learned.

SPIDERS results demonstrated additional capability for Joint Base Pear Harbor Hickam, including:

• Synchronizing with the utility service power signal while pushing electricity back on to the base distribution system
• Operational viewing of other circuits in the substation in addition to the one controlled by the micro-grid, and
• Power factor improvements and the opportunity to test generators at load

The Navy customer (Navy Facility Command Pacific/Hawaii) provided positive and constructive feedback throughout the technical and operational demonstrations at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam (JBPHH). The only item where Navy utility folks have any residual concerns for on-going operations and maintenance is keeping their workforce trained and ready to employ SPIDERS and dealing with new technology after the buzz wears off. Our contractor (Burns & McDonnell) continues the dialog of training and post contract support. Two devices at JBPHH have had heat related challenges, and we're recommending we paint the boxes white instead of Navy utility brown.

To date, there isn't a system owner. Controls, hardware and software are not static and require some continuing education and occasional attention. DoD will face this challenge across the board as we take a collection of electrical appliances and make them a systems engineered smart grid. Oops, did I say smart grid?  I meant distributed energy management system. The good news is SPIDERS showed the truth in our motto: do no harm. During our operational demonstration, the software "burped" and the system went back to traditional stand alone back up power. The amazing thing: the 24/7 operators (blue collar Navy civilian) saw the system degrade in their 24/7 ops center without tripping loads or causing other electrical problems. Their after action dialog shows true customer values: a system that does what it says it will do. 

Cyber security critiques continue to bubble in the background. Growing areas of concern were anticipated, just not the ramp rate by which DoD is expecting trouble. PACOM (a combatant command and one of two SPIDERS Operational Managers) has invested many dollars and man hours in working closely with DHS and DOE labs to promote a comprehensive set of industrial controls cyber protection test(s). Phase I SPIDERS didn't require external hacking as part of the operational demonstration, yet in the end, we performed a cyber experiment that showed promise in our path forward. Phases II (Fort Carson CO) and III (USMC Camp Smith HI) offer expanded cyber experimentation and we plan to stay current with DoD and DHS process to validate their application in the real world of installation industrial controls.

Overall, most folks still fail to recognize the energy security value of micro-grids. To answer the question of worth for micro-grids, phase III SPIDERS will work to communicate with the local utility service, and provide ancillary services when connected to the utility service; and also offer other measurements to adjust power quality and controls while waiting for the anticipated utility outage so that the security aspect of islanding comes into play. 

Life cycle configuration management of smart systems might need a DoD PM to solve deployment issues. Frankly, it isn't an ownership definition that challenges DoD, although that's often the red herring slow thinking folks suggest. Ownership needs simple definitions that already exist in DoD. Accountable, physical, and custodial owners of distributed energy management systems will likely need to agree on metrics to begin programming for their responsibilities.

The take away, no, the bottom line is that smart systems are coming and we can manage those if we apply just a modicum of intellectual activity up front. SPIDERS isn't the first micro-grid. SPIDERS is a systems engineered solution using hardware and controls to insert new technologies to installation transmission and distribution systems to enable more energy security from existing and planned assets. How much is it worth? I'll answer that question in a future post. HS

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Energy Security Conference Alert: IAGS' Target Energy 2013

UPDATE: Conference Cancelled ... Sorry about that.

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What is IAGS you say? I'll answer briskly: the Institute for the Analysis of of Global Security. Teaming with NATO's Energy Security Center of Excellence, IAGS is hosting a conference called Target Energy that includes but goes well beyond cybersecurity and the grid.

For those SGSB readers whose professional lives are circumscribed by electric sector security, this is a chance to stretch a bit. Here's how the organizers describe the focus:

The cost of securing energy supplies is increasing due to threats from terrorists, hackers, activists and hostile nations. What is the impact of attacks against energy, and how can companies, organizations, and governments work with NATO to increase security?

Presented by NATO's Energy Security Center of Excellence and the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Target Energy 2013 will address energy issues ranging from how best to protect on-and-offshore infrastructure to preventing the increasingly frequent millisecond cyber-attacks against network systems and infrastructure.

The objectives are to actively stimulate civil-military co-operation and exchange on shared energy concerns, further public outreach between NATO bodies and private industry technology and solutions’ providers.

You will join international government officials, policymakers, defense planners, logisticians, energy industry executives, security solution providers and IT experts from NATO Member and Partner countries.

Sounds good right?  Here are the details you'll need:

• When: October 31 - November 1, 2013
• Where: Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC
• For Agenda, speakers and to register, simply click: HERE

Hope to see you there!

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Energy Security Update: Renewables Economics Hitting German Utilities Hard

A week or so ago I posted about an EEI report warning that many if not most utilities are ill equipped to adapt to shifting business models arising from the build-out of distributed energy generation technologies.

In what some call a vicious cycle, the more technology allows customers to partially or fully remove their loads from the grid, the fewer payers there are to support the maintenance (let alone the modernization) of the grid's vast and aging infrastructure. I also asked readers to consider the implications for cybersecurity thinking and spending in the context of these types of mounting economic pressures.

Now I've got another article for you ...
this one is from Slate about Germany, land of the solar panel. And of the unexpected impacts pro-solar government policy has played, and what this all means to German (and US and global) utilities. Start here:

The proliferation of privately owned solar has large power companies in Germany worried. For two decades, they’ve been forced to facilitate and finance their competition, helping turn customers into producers.... Utility companies [were required] to plug all renewable power producers, down to the smallest rooftop solar panel, into the national grid and buy their power at a fixed, slightly above-market rate that guaranteed a modest return over the long term

The results of this policy, coupled with the increasing maturation of the enabling technologies, makes this intensity of this wave feel similar to recent industry-upending impacts of digital cameras on the century-old film photography business, and the many internet-triggered upheavals in media ... albeit perhaps in slower motion. 

No country has invested in and incentivized solar the way Germany has. Consider this:

The southern German state of Bavaria, population 12.5 million, has three photovoltaic panels per resident, which adds up to more installed solar capacity than in the entire United States.

If and until practical grid-scale energy storage arrives, there's going to be pressure on the status quo models there: 

 ... coal and nuclear plants—which can’t simply be switched on and off at will—must be kept running to guarantee a steady stream of electricity when the sun isn’t shining. That means overproduction of power during daylight hours, as the country’s ample solar energy floods onto the grid along with electricity produced by power plants. Power companies traditionally charge more during the day, when offices are full and manufacturing plants are in full swing, so the glut of daytime solar power reduces their profit.

And that's not the only source of pain:

The proliferation of solar panels on homes also takes high-margin residential customers off the grid at peak hours. And the energy surplus has driven prices for traditional coal and nuclear power down, even as renewables are still guaranteed more-than-competitive rates.

And the kicker:

As power companies try to pass the costs to consumers in the form of higher bills, that just encourages more people to put solar panels on their roofs.

The full Slate article can be read HERE.

Other countries, including certain regions in the US, are heading in this direction, though at a more measured pace than Germany.  But still, until a new model emerges, threats to the economic viability of utilities are a threat to the grid and therefore national and regional energy security. We've got to figure this out proactively  not re-actively.

Photo credit: TheTimChannel on Flickr.com

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Early Conference Alert: EnergySec Call for Speakers

If you have potent ideas that could help utilities, regulators or other members of our tight-knit community, a rich vocabulary and a booming, resonant voice, are somewhat animated and can make dramatic hand gestures, then you may have a place in the line-up at the next EnergySec conference.

Here's the content of just-received email in case you didn't get or see it directly:

The EnergySec Annual Security Summit has been privileged to host some of the most intriguing, informative, technical and entertaining cyber security presentations and panels this industry has seen. But we think we can do better.


We have been preparing for our 9th summit by selecting and curating a list of speakers (and topics) we think should be represented, but we know there are a number of other amazing opportunities we are missing.

We are inviting researchers, consultants, governments agencies, utilities and other cyber security experts to present their innovative ideas and success stories at the 9th Annual EnergySec Security Summit (September 17-19, 2013) at the Magnolia Hotel Denver.

Specifically, we are looking for innovative strategies, ideas, and technologies that help attendees improve operational reliability of their utility through sound security practices; build streamlined security processes to increase efficiencies; improve security regulatory compliance; implement security solutions that work; and address the importance cyber security for the energy sector. Specifically, we are looking for high-quality content delivered by dynamic presenters. 

You can click HERE to submit yourself and your topic.

Of course, if you've got something to say but have issues with public speaking, you could just forward me your material for posting on the blog, or work on yourself with these folks: http://www.toastmasters.org/

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