From the Captain's Journal:
The most vulnerable structure, system or component for large scale coal plants is the main step up transformer – that component that handles electricity at 230 or 500 kV. They are one of a kind components, and no two are exactly alike. They are so huge and so heavy that they must be transported to the site via special designed rail cars intended only for them, and only about three of these exist in the U.S.They are no longer fabricated in the U.S., much the same as other large scale steel fabrication. It’s manufacture has primarily gone overseas. These step up transformers must be ordered years in advance of their installation. Some utilities are part of a consortium to keep one of these transformers available for multiple coal units, hoping that more will not be needed at any one time. In industrial engineering terms, the warehouse min-max for these components is a fine line.
On any given day with the right timing, several well trained, dedicated, well armed fighters would be able to force their way on to utility property, fire missiles or lay explosives at the transformer, destroy it, and perhaps even go to the next given the security for coal plants. Next in line along the transmission system are other important transformers, not as important as the main step up transformers, but still important, that would also be vulnerable to attack. With the transmission system in chaos and completely isolated due to protective relaying, and with the coal units that supply the majority of the electricity to the nation incapable of providing that power for years due to the wait for step up transformers, whole cites, heavy industry, and homes and businesses would be left in the dark for a protracted period of time, all over the nation.
Bob Owen's blog elaborates on this:
The economy would collapse, regardless of how much good will and positive hope there was among the ruling elite. The hard facts of life – America in the dark – would soon become apparent to everyone, and the economy wouldn’t be able to absorb it.
After the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s, I took a job in upstate New York for a subcontractor of Central Hudson Gas and Electric. I was part of a crew sent out to map electrical transmission line power poles and towers via GPS, check the tower footings for integrity, check the best routes for access, etc.
It meant I rode quads (ATVs) through mountains, swamps, forests, neighborhoods and farms all over southern New York, in winter’s icy chill and blowing snow, and in summer’s melting heat. It was exhausting work, often in beautiful scenery.
... what I remember most about the job were the days we spent up near the Rondout Reservoir. What I remember in specific was discovering how powerless the government was to protect key utilities.
In a post-9/11 New York, where terrorism was foremost on the minds of many, you simply didn’t mess around near New York City’s water supply, and Roundout was part of that equation.
The thought that we could be viewed as a threat as we rode the hills around the reservoir for several days never crossed our minds, because we were focused on our jobs minding the electrical transmission lines, not the waters flowing nearby.
It wasn’t until late on the second day, where we parked right beside the dam’s offices, that law enforcement caught up to us. Apparently we’d been the on again, off again suspects in a low intensity chase for two days, with the law enforcement agency that was in charge of providing security for the reservoir (NYDNR, maybe?) trying to chase us down, without any luck. They didn’t catch us until we parked the truck beside their HQ on the afternoon of the second day and began unloading our gear right under their windows.
That it took them 14 hours to “catch” us was a little unsettling. Then I started thinking about the much more fragile structures we were working beside routinely.
You see, we’d ridden up to edge of the Danskammer and Roseton power generating stations, and a dozen or more unattended substations during the course of this contract, without being challenged at all.
Substations like the one above could be accessed not just from surface roads, but from access trails under the power lines by people with UTVs, ATVs, and motorcycles.
Just like the residential transformers in your neighborhood, the transformers in substations are cooled with a form of mineral oil. If someone decides to blast a transformer at its base as prepper Bryan Smith did, and the oil drains out, then the transformer either burns out catastrophically, or if the utility is lucky, a software routine notices the problem and shuts the substation (or at least the affected portion) down. The power must then be rerouted through the remaining grid until that transformer can be replaced and any other resulting damage can be repaired.
Update (April 17, 2013): I just came across this April 16 article (via Survival Blog) about sabotage of electrical transformers in California:
Were an angry group of disenfranchised citizens to target in a strategic manner the substations leading to a city or geographic area—say, Albany, for example—they could put the area in the dark for as long as it took to bring the substations back online. Were they committed enough, and spread their attacks out over a wide enough area, perhaps mixing in a few tens of dozens of the residential transformers found every few hundred yards along city streets, they could overwhelm the utility companies ability to repair the damage being caused or law enforcement’s ability to stop them. The government could perhaps assign a soldier or cop for every transformer, substation and switch, but they’d run out of men long before they ran out of things they need guarded. Not that the government could even guarantee to actually protect the transformers they were guarding; a residential transformer is a big, stationary target, and the substation transformers and switches and other equipment even bigger targets. Residential transformers are easily “touched” by even a moderately competent deer hunter from hundreds of yards away, perhaps separated by roads, subdivisions, swamps or streams. Substations are a dense area target easily struck from a half-mile or more away.
Meanwhile, the lone wolves and small teams would simply shift to other targets of opportunity left unguarded by an overwhelmed and outmatched government force, of which there are many.
How many days with partial power or no power, how many nights in the dark, would it take before the local economy collapsed in the targeted area? Insurgents could cripple a city, region, or state, without ever firing a bullet at another human being.
South Bay authorities have announced that a coordinated act of vandalism that took down electricity and phone service on Tuesday.
One of those incidents happened at a PG&E substation in San Jose.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department is now conducting a criminal investigation.
"PG&E notified us that they had a breach in their security fence and that somebody had actually gained access to the substation and damaged, I believe, they're either transformers or radiators," said Kurtis Stenderup of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department.
At least five of the seven banks of transformers appear to have been shot, causing them to leak oil.
Authorities in charge of the state's power grid are asking South Bay customers to conserve electricity at least until midnight Wednesday morning. So far, PG&E says there have been no outages and the state's Flex Alert warning is just a precaution.
"As we conduct the investigation there may be equipment that may need to be taken offline or out of service," said Nicole Liebelt of PG&E.
Just a short distance from the substation someone cut an AT&T phone cable leaving people in the city of Gilroy unable to call emergency services like 911 from their landlines.
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