65 Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC, November 24, 1332 Hrs (1732Z)

Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC, November 24, 1332 Hrs (1732Z)

"Hey, Rachel?" The person working the ESF 12 desk said. "Yes?" Rachel said. She was standing on the other side of where the ESF 12 desk was. "I think I have an idea of exactly how they are going to attack..." Everyone had been going over the data that had been scraped from the website they were using to communicate. "okay, give me a second." Rachel went back to looking at what the ESF 3 desk was showing her. A few moments later, Rachel came over the ESF 12 desk. "Alright, what have you got?" "You might want to sit down, this is going to take a few minutes to explain." The person at the ESF 12 desk said. Rachel pulled out a chair from the empty desk next to the ESF 12 desk. "I've not stopped thinking about this since we started work on trying to figure out where they might strike." She reached up and pulled a piece of paper out of the bin on the desk and flipped it over so she had a blank slate. She drew several things on the paper, and about the only that Michelle could ID on the drawing was the transmission towers and the regular line poles at the right side of the drawing. "okay, How much do you know about how the electrical grid functions?" "I know that I flip on a light switch and I get light. It's not something I've ever thought about, to be honest..." Rachel shrugged and finally got a glance at the ID badge of the girl sitting in front of her. "You and most other people..." The girl, who's name tag badge read Corrine said. "okay, so first we have to generate the power." She tapped the very poorly drawn turbines on the far left of the page. "From there, the power is passed out to a step up transformer," She tapped the transformer. "And then it moves via these high voltage or HV lines. Most of these are in the two hundred thirty Kilovolt range. These are the lines you see suspended on the really tall towers." Rachel nodded. She had seen the towers in the midwest where she grew up. "These are called transmission towers because they hold the lines that transmit the power over long distances. Once you get to the destination, there are step down transformers that step the voltage back down to around thirty kilovolts. From here it goes to another transformer at a substation that will knock the power level down to around seven thousand two hundred volts. The power then travels along normal utility poles where it will eventually enter yet another transformer which will reduce that to two hundred forty volts. It travels to your house where the phases are split and you get one hundred ten volts. Still with me?" "I think so." Rachel had no idea that the the electric grid was that complicated. Corrine reached up and grabbed another sheet of paper, drawing pretty much the same thing but this time adding a bunch of little boxes around each part of the drawing labeled 'CB' "okay," Corinne continued, "Throughout the grid there are circuit breakers. Their purpose is to isolate parts of the grid for maintenance or in the event that something, such as a tree limb or equipment failure disrupts the line. So, a tree that grows here," she drew a three shape on the paper tall enough for it to reach the lowest level of of the lines on transmission towers. "And touches the lines will cause a short to ground. The breakers on either side of the transmission lines will open and disconnect the lines. Once the tree is removed, they close the breakers and power flows through the lines again. Now, here's a little known fact: the power generated and the power used need to be in balance... If the supply is higher than the demand, aren't The frequency on the grid goes up, which causes more things to shut down to protect the the end devices that are plugged into the grid. This would be pretty much destroy anything that is attached to the grid. Conversely if the demand is higher than the supply, the frequency drops and you get uncontrolled brownouts. That's why suppliers like PG&E do rolling brownouts to help keep the demand from surpassing the supply. If things get out of whack, it can be catastrophic. Generators have been destroyed because the grid destabilized and the generator suddenly tried to spin the opposite destruction." Corrine watched as Rachel cringed. "Yeah, I can tell you have an idea in your head of how that went... The problem is that if you do enough damage to the middle, the ends could suffer, badly. And spare Gensets aren't really available. I think they are either going to hit transmission lines and towers or they are going to hit the HV transformers... Generation is too protected, and the substations at the end of the line are usually in populated areas that someone would hopefully notice if someone were to start messing with it. The HV stuff is located away from major populations, meaning it's harder to protect. That's where I'd do it..." Rachel looked at Corrine and chuckled. "Planning an act of subversion, are we?" "No, Ma'am," Corrine chuckled in response. "To beat them, you've got to think like they do." "Fair enough..." Rachel stood said, standing. "Thank you for the lesson on how all of this actually works together, gives me an idea of where to go next. GIS!" She walked back over to her desk in the operations pod. "Ma'am?" The brown haired man at the GIS desk said. "Build me a map of every high voltage transformer in the US. If we don't have the data, get with Energy and get the data. ESF 13!" "Yes, Ma'am" the person at the GIS desk responded. He'd basically been sitting there not doing much because there was nothing that was assigned to him. "Yes, Ma'am, the FBI agent assigned to the ESF 13 desk glanced toward Michelle. "Use the data that GIS provides, combined with the data that cyber has, to try to pinpoint where an attack could take place." "Yes, Ma'am."