Overview & Events

Project Description

EPRI’s transmission-related physical security projects focus on topics related to overhead, underground, and substations. This research seeks to enhance resilience and reduce the potential of disruptions and/or damage by better understanding physical security and intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) events and the efficacy of mitigation and response options. Project efforts seek to find or develop better ways to assess, prevent, and defend against these threats.

Research Value

Benefits of this project may include:

  • Enhanced resilience and security to protect assets, the general public, and employee safety
  • Increased understanding of component vulnerability to physical and IEMI attack
  • Identification of potential mitigation options and assessment of their effectiveness
  • Improved awareness and decision making based on third-party, unbiased findings

How to Get Engaged

As with most of EPRI’s R&D, there are many ways to get engaged. The simplest one is to join the project! SPN That gets you invited to all of the meetings and (when possible) invitation to act as an observer, adds you to the list for all email updates, gives you a seat at the table for giving feedback regarding tasks and priorities, and also gives access to all deliverables from a calendar year for no additional cost. As a project funder, you are also eligible to volunteer your sites for pilot testing.

Other options are spinning off additional, security-related supplemental projects. These might be one-on-one, or collaborative with more than one utility. Examples might include specialty projects or testing, help integrating research results, etc,.

FAQ

Didn’t this used to be an Annual Research Portfolio (Annual Research Portfolio ) project? What happened? Yes, it used to be focused on only substations as “P37.114.” EPRI made the strategic decision in 2020 to make it a unified annual supplemental project by expanding the scope to include overhead, underground, and substations, and was able to reduce the project price in the process!

Is this project aimed to be more for just “security” folks, or more for “transmission” (i.e.: operations and maintenance) staff? Again, the answer is “yes!” The R&D tasks and discussions are meant to engage both of these groups and meet their needs.

Engagement Opportunities

Calendar of Events

Quarter Date Event
Q1 2/20/23 Advisory Briefing
Q1 3/7/23 Open WebEx
Q1 3/8/23 Project WebEx
Q2 TBD Project WebEx
Q3 TBD Project WebEx
Q4 TBD Project WebEx