Title pretty much covers it:
Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism.
April Sniper Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country's Power Grid.
Story at Wall Street Journal Online

Thoughts?
-Blast

it doesn't take a large hole to drain the cooling oil out of a power transformer....around .308"

This is indeed most concerning, a SINGLE attack such as the one reported is unlikely to have severe consequences, but a concerted attack at a number of sites over a large geograpahical area could result in severe disruption.

Substations are inherently vulnerable, they are large, in the open air, and no matter how secure fencing is made, still vulnerable to rifle fire from a considerable distance.

Large transformers are normally equiped with safety devices that monitor the oil level and take the transformer off line if the oil is lost. This would still interupt supply in the case of a large scale attack, but should save the transformer. It can be restored to use after mending the hole and re filling with oil.

It is my view that the government should subsidise the manufacture of perhaps a few dozen spare very large transformers, these are readily available in modest numbers from several suppliers. A sudden need for say 50 under emergency conditions would be problematic, but ordering perhaps 10 a year whilst times are normal and keeping these at strageic locations could help a lot. Spare transformers could be hidden or well gaurded, perhaps on military bases that are already secure.

For the individual, this should be another reason for preps in general, off grid electricity, food, fuel, water etc, as widely disscussed on these forums.

For essiential industries and services, this should be another reason to keep standby generating plant in good order, and to keep plenty of fuel.

Pacific Gas and Electric is not very popular with environmental groups, and others have claimed that the company failed to pay it's taxes and put huge sums instead into lobbying. The damage could easily have been caused by eco-terrorists, or disgruntled employees who have issues with the company.

Just as media and gov't types of late attribute every forest and brush fire to 'hunters', they are quick to finger foreign terrorists as the culprit here, and expanded gov't as the only remedy.

Substations are no more vulnerable than our transportation systems, oil and gas pipelines, wind generators, or water supply. A bullet is just a little metal pellet, not an explosive device. Private business can better design substations, and easily place cheap concrete and metal shielding around critical components in existing vulnerable substations. The use of surveillance systems, and fault detection systems already in place could be improved without too much effort.

Except experience has shown that private business has been loath to spend the money (unless forced to by government) to properly maintain such things as oil/gas pipelines and other infrastructure, for even normal operations, let alone make them more robust against deliberate sabotage.

For example, just ask folks in Michigan and Arkansas about oil pipelines, and folks in California and Canada about gas pipelines.

The WSJ article is behind a paywall, here's one that isn't: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Ter...243731551.html.

It appears that this attack happened in April 2013. Nobody lost power, and nobody was arrested.

If it's difficult to protect electrical substations from this sort of attack, it should be fairly easy to put together a detection system and a response plan. Would that stop a large-scale planned attack against critical infrastructure? No. But it would likely allow for single actors to be caught and incarcerated.

At about 1:18 in the video, it is said that "this could be an example of how cyber-terrorism could threaten. . ."

Huh?

The cyber-terrorists are now using sniper weapons and cutting cables at power stations?

The hype dial is getting maxed out over this.

Yeah, the incident really deserves investigation. But not every crime is an indication of a terrorist plot.

To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a crime is just a crime."

I can't consider this just a crime. Someone who does this intends to deprive many people of electric power. That's an act of terrorism in itself, whether or not the perpetrators are trying to make a political statement. The crimes of "trespassing" and "vandalism" don't get the job done here.

Terrorists! We call them Travelers in Scotland..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-25432545

Substations within the Grid aren't the weakest link, its the nuts and bolts on the legs of the HV Transmission pylons on the interconnects between the grid nodes. These are virtually un-defensible against a synchronized terrorist attack.

Dig up a few (around 30 Fibre Optic cable fat pipes on the East and west coast on the USA) and the Internet could also be taken down across the world

BTW Travelers in the UK, armed with a JCB digger has also been able to disable the most important RAF Air force base in the UK, but the News Media haven't been able to tell anyone.

I respectfully disagree. Taking out the substation did not cause a power outage. The attacker here clearly had significant knowledge of his target, and it could reasonably be assumed he knew that it wouldn't. It appears to me that his goal was to damage things and make PG&E spend a lot of money fixing them.

Even if the goal was to deprive electrical power from a largish group of people, it would seem to greatly expand the definition of "terrorism" from "making war upon civilian noncombatants" or "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims".