In the News: BPA helps put electrical grid safety to the test

On Nov. 18 and 19, the Bonneville Power Administration participated in North America’s largest grid security exercise: GridEx. The exercise is a biennial event hosted by the North American Reliability Corporation’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center. More than 370 organizations participated nationwide.

Beginning a week prior, BPA’s GridEx participants received emails with the header “Exercise. Exercise. Exercise.” These emails set the stage for the two-day event, where participants responded to simulated physical and cyberattacks across the region.

The exercise was primarily held at BPA’s Ross Complex in Vancouver, Washington, where participants consisted of exercise control staff, players, actors and evaluators. Participants formed an incident management team and responded to various scenario “injects,” while control staff and actors ensured the exercise remained on-task and engaging.

Adding to the event’s realism, Columbian reporter Sarah Wolf conducted in-exercise interviews with the assigned incident commander and public information officer. Check out the Columbian’s GridEx coverage in their article, “BPA helps put electrical grid safety to the test.”