Get ready for GridEx II

Nov. 13-14, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) will conduct a large-scale drill aimed at determining how well the nation’s electricity grid is able to cope with a significant level of disruption.

The grid-security exercise is dubbed GridEx II (the first of such biennial exercises—GridEx 2011—took place Nov. 16-17, 2011). More than 150 companies and organizations are scheduled to participate.

As The New York Times reported in August, “thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid.”

A goal of GridEx II is “to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities,” the article said.