By Wayne Price   

Reliable electricity is the result of a complex infrastructure of substations, transformers, and miles of transmission and distribution lines.  This infrastructure must be constantly monitored, controlled, and maintained to ensure reliability. The reliability of the U.S. electric power system is critical to the nation’s economic vitality and the well-being of society. Today, that reliability is being challenged, as the infrastructure ages and as incidences of severe weather and other threats to the system increase.
    A gunfire attack on two electrical substations in rural North Carolina in December left tens of thousands of people without power, schools closed, a curfew imposed, and authorities investigating what they say was an intentional, criminal attack.
    Questions persisted about who carried out the attack and what could have been their motive in knocking out power to Moore County and its 100,000 residents.
    The outage began shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday, December 3, 2022, near Carthage, N.C., and soon spread to encompass the majority of the county. Officials have so far stopped short of calling the attack an act of domestic terrorism but have insisted that any perpetrators will be prosecuted.
    “This is an unprecedented outage that’s drawn national attention because of the crime that occurred,” Dale Lambert, CEO of Randolph EMC. He added that the Moore County Sheriff’s Department has increased patrols around the co-op’s assets since the attack to help discourage further criminal activity.
    Duke Energy said it will cost several million dollars to repair its equipment. Randolph Electric Membership Corp. officials said 2,768 of its members were impacted by the outage. The Asheboro-based co-op immediately responded by dispatching crews to assess the damage and craft a plan to restore service to members as quickly as possible.
    While this attack was not in Nebraska, our local public power districts and electric cooperatives constantly work to prevent outages and protect the reliability of our system from natural and manmade threats. Maintaining and enhancing the security of the electric grid is a top priority for us and the entire electric industry.