According to Detroit Free Press, due to unstoppable wind and rain, energy has been cut for more than 300,000 residents in Michigan (this past Sunday). The state’s two most popular energy companies are sharing the information they have available, but do not have an exact timeline as to when they will restore energy for use by residents.
DTE Energy made a public statement that more than 185,000 are without power right now, but around 262,000 had been affected initially.
These outages occurred due to fallen trees damaging over 1,000 wires in the state. Consumer Energy stated that 46,000 residents had been affected, but the original number was 81,000.
Even though this is a large-scale outage, both companies have made contributions to mitigate the outages and restore energy to at least some of its userbase.
The reason why it is taking so long to restore power is that the workers can barely get to the location of the damaged wiring due to high winds that make it difficult to walk or drive to an area to begin fixing the issues.
Although there was some progress, DTE is predicating an increase in the number of outages for tonight (Monday). Consumer Energy is expecting an increase as well and has said it may not be able to mitigate the situation until Wednesday when the wind and rain is projected to slow down. The company has a staff of 250 employees working to restore energy.
DTE is using 300 employees to help restore power. The energy sector is one of 16 critical infrastructures (CIs) that exist in the United States. Many analysts discuss which of the 16 is most important to secure. Most analyst would suggest that protecting energy, specifically the electric grid is the most crucial and significant CI to focus on.
As a CI, energy is extremely important because it is interdependent with the other 15 CIs that cannot function properly without electric power. Sectors like transportation, healthcare, and government defense systems each rely on electric power and become extremely vulnerable without it.
The outages taking place in Michigan is a direct result of natural disaster. It is also important to indicate that in many cases, energy is targeted through cyberattacks. They each can cause a significant amount of physical damage. If this were a cybersecurity malfunction staff members would need to find the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) controls and the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and either mitigate or replace them since they have been under cyberattack. However, Michigan is having the same outcome as a cyberattack but with natural disasters.
Both energy companies are executing their contingency plans; however, part of it cannot be implemented yet due to the severe weather. Not only will both companies have to rewire their assets, but also work with community organizations to remove debris from areas hard hit by rain and wind. The two companies are positive that they will restore energy back to normal; it is just a temporary inconvenience for some of the residents in Michigan for the next few days. They each expect energy to be restored fully by the end of the week.