What Really Happened with the Substation Attack in North Carolina?

An overview of the substation attack in Moore County, North Carolina in December 2022.

Sorry I sound a bit stuffy in this one! We had to shoot this before everyone left for the holiday break, and I was still getting over a cold.

This event highlights the need for making critical substations more secure and also making the grid more robust so that someone can’t rob tens of thousands of people of their lights, heat, comfort, and livelihood for four days with just a few well-placed bullets.

Practical Engineering is a YouTube channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!

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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.

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This video is sponsored by Nebula.
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images.
Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Producer/Writer/Host: Grady Hillhouse
Editor: Wesley Crump
Production Assistant: Josh Lorenz
Script Editor: Ralph Crewe
Background Painting: Josh Welker
Graphics: Nebula Studios
Drone Videography: Sandhills Aerial
Bullet hole photos: Jonathan Drake

[PracticalEngineeringChannel]

📚What do you think? Are you willing to pay higher rates for increased physical security, or are you okay with the risk of a few outages to get cheaper electricity?
😷Sorry I sound a little stuffy in this one! Wanting to get this out as possible meant having to shoot with a cold before everyone left for the holidays.

[dr.kraemer]

Grady quietly dragging the shooter for reading the grid diagram wrong is low-key hilarious.

[htxmatt]

Someone I know worked on putting these 2 subsations back online, pretty much everything in this video is correct and actually happened. The other mess he told me about was the sewage treatment plant backing up and causing their pumps to trip off and he had to wade through raw sewage to fix the jammed up pumps. Props to the electrical engineers and all the hard workers that fixed this mess in a couple of days

[cameronallen]

I’m a Duke employee and my dad and brother are too. They both worked this outage. I was pleasantly surprised that everything you said in this video was 100% accurate

[coop]

Thirty years ago I worked for a company that built and repaired transformers, especially the massive ones. Each one is unique, and they are not built by automated machines, both the coils and the stacks are made by hand with mechanical assists; these are skilled and time consuming jobs. The big ones are not something that can be replaced in a month, let alone in days, plus they require special transportation just to move them due to size. And Grady is right, there are no replacements sitting around in storage anywhere to be swapped in if something like this happens on a larger scale.

[mikefochtman]

At a power plant where I worked, the main output transformers were tested every outage. When testing showed they were nearing their end of life, replacements were ordered. Built and shipped from overseas, took over a year to get them. When one started developing further issues, we had to derate (reduce output about 50%) until the replacements arrived and could be installed. These monsters are pretty much custom and built-to-order.

[krmould]

When I did my military engineering training, we had a special course on "Urban Denial." The basic concept was how to make a large urban center uninhabitable. We had experts from the electric companies, water and sewer departments of the local city, and the natural gas company come to speak to us. They walked us through step-by-step how to shut down electricity, water and sewer, and gas in a modern city. If you have inside knowledge, this is disturbingly simple. The key is to attack items that are crucial to the system but hard to repair or replace (like the transformers in the video above). The electrical expert said, with a single box of TNT, he could disable electricity to the entire city in an hour or two. Power is one thing, but if you cut off water, sewer and heat too, things get very bad very fast. Most key services (hospitals, police, fire) have generator backups, but they usually only have a week or so of fuel. They can be resupplied, but millions of people can't be. Look at what happened in 2003, a software bug caused a cascade failure that knocked out power across multiple states in north-east USA and Ontario, Canada leaving millions without power. That only lasted a few hours. Now, multiply that chaos by weeks or even months. I am pleased to see Grady bringing this risk to people's attention. You need to be prepared to take care of yourself and your family in the event of an emergency. Everyone should be prepared for at least 72 hours with no outside assistance. If you are able, you should consider extending that to 2 - 3 weeks. Camping gear (camp stove, lanterns, sleeping bags) and preserved food are a good start.

[tilenjeraj]

My family company designs high voltage transformer stations in Slovenia. What we do now is we build walls around transformers. It is a fire and anti explosion safety feature. It is becoming a standard.
Transformers are in mass production and are possible to repair. Few months ago we moved from active service to a museum a transformer made in 1920. They are made to last!

[technick]

I live in Richmond County, which is the next county to the south of Moore. These outages are always especially dangerous to those residents who rely on electrical power for life-sustaining medical equipment. For anyone who is reliant on electrical power to remain healthy, take the time to invest in a backup generator of sufficient capacity to power your medical equipment. Keep at least 5 gallons of clean fuel on hand at all times, treat this fuel with stabilizer, and become proficient at starting and properly setting up your generator. Letting the engine run for at least 15 minutes once a month will help to prevent stale fuel from gumming up the carburetor, and ensures the engine will start and run when it is needed. Yes, I practice this method I preach at home myself, albeit with an old Navy surplus carburetor-less diesel generator

I work for a local small engine repair shop, and tried to help as much as possible by expediting repairs to everyone's portable generators who lived in Moore Country when this happened. I appreciate the coverage of this vandalism, and hope such events don't become a new trend. Power outages are an inconvenience during the best weather, but can quickly turn deadly during periods of extreme heat or cold.

[skenzyme]

Substations are vulnerable, but high voltage transmission line towers in remote locations are completely indefensible.

[cmdr]

I work as a consulting PM for a major utility. For the last year I have been managing security projects to harden sub stations. Some stations are pretty much fortresses while others are lightly protected. That is quickly changing, they can track ballistics and drones.

Also my latest material lead times say transformers are in excess of 60 week lead times from transmission transformers

[JaR]

6:59 The mobile transformer looked really neat, almost menacing. Would have been cool to see going down the road, but I bet it had a cover.
One up for all the great people who have over-thought infrastructure emergencies.

[Gunsforall]

Correction. Those are not ballistic resistant walls. They are fire walls. They are built to contain a fire to keep it from spreading instead of using a fire suppression system(Sprinkler System).

[tonythomas]

WOW Ive been an electrician for 40yrs and Ive never seen a mobile substation. That was impressive.

[bstephens]

Any 230KV transformer requires about 5-7 days period to bowser (multiple vacuum pulldowns, vacuum fill the oil from the bottom up, heat the oil, circulate the oil through water separation filtration). There is careful testing done to assure moisture levels are safe for energization. Once the envelope is penetrated by moist ambient air, there is no recourse. You have to perform this process. This time doesn't include draw down of the remaining oil, repair of the radiators, etc. Typically, the radiators can be repaired by welding. Also, utilities used to keep wooden pegs to drive into the holes to 1) stop leaking and 2) possibly prevent tripping, 3)refill oil if the envelope still has a nitrogen blanket. The low oil tripping schemes are pretty high up in the tank. The float will go to the alarm level first and then trip afterwards. The goal is to trip before any sensitive components are above the oil. I have first hand experience with this type failure (low tank leaks) and generally there is a small vacuum formed by the escaping oil and it does leak but not at a tremendous rate. Probably the worst of the leak is due to the flow rate of the nitrogen regulator trying to maintain the blanket. So it takes a while for the transformer to go into alarm and then trip. Luckily all of this happens before serious damage is done. If the radiators are penetrated in a way that damages multiple layers, those have to be removed, cut apart, repaired and rewelded/layered to a full assembly. That takes a while. Many utilities have a full repair facility for power equipment and that would be done there and returned to the substation. In some cases, it might be possible to get spare radiators from other transformers. For instance, the 230/115KV Autobank(s) in a substation could have all good radiators put on one transformer if they are in fact the same dimensions and mounts. Also, radiators could be removed, the flanges blocked off and operate the transformer at reduced load until scheduled repairs can occur. In a situation like this, you do whatever you have to to get the lights on.

That location is unusual with a looped 115 system and no alternate feeds. Generally there is a large 115 network and 230 network with multiple dispersed 230/115 locations where those networks tie.

A side note these 230/115 autotransformers also play an important role as a ground current source. A ground fault on the 115kv will be seen as a 3 phase event on the 230kv network due to the closed delta tertiary windings. This allows the generators and 230kv system & up to function as a three phase source for any 115kv problems. A useful feature, it works the same way in either direction.

Another note, the low oil tripping systems are usually hardwired. No operator intervention required. The nature of these gauges, microswitches and the fact that the transformer is a grounding source plays into the design of the system. Most use a blocking method where the tripping coil is shorted by one contact which must open before the contact that makes causes the coil to operate. So a contact must part and one must make for the trip to occur. There is usually a current limiting resistor in there in case both contact are made at the same time. It is pretty hard to have a misop of that system unless you are doing maintenance on the indicator and forget to block it. Yep, it happens. It's not hard for everyone to 'know your name'.

[ttmilk]

I got stuck in Moore county overnight on a trip back from the Lantern Festival. My Girlfriend and I stopped at a gas station outside of the town, where she didn't want to get gas at, prices were too high and she was sketched out. So we left and drove into Moore County where we found a gas station in a dark part of town. After gas station hopping, we decided to call Family for help, and had to wait a few hours for them to get there. Meanwhile we were reading reports of how everything was all unfolding. Originally we thought something must have fell on a powerline.. and services would be restored soon. We were wrong. Met some friendly people. Police officers, a lady gave us a gas jug... in case someone would have let us siphon some of their out of their car.

[Suicynic]

Grady, you’re the best. Please keep this style and take your time with this amazing content!!!!

[Nosoupferyou]

Hi Grady! I am a substation engineer, and I've specifically worked on designing substation security in the past. It is true that ballistic barriers are becoming more common, however they are very expensive. This is because the massive height requirement of the walls themselves. When you are considering protection from firearms, you must do a line of sight calculation from the highest advantage point available. Do some basic trig, and there can easily be 40-50ft high walls to protect some of the bigger transformers in higher kV substations!

[FlorenceSlugcat]

That mobile power station is pretty impressive.
It seems to have been able to act as a transformer for the area while the other ones were still under repair.
The people in that area would probably have had to wait much longer for power if that truck was not available. It likely also assisted in speeding up the repairs by providing power to the substation itself, making work easier.

[bygna]

I moved to moore county just after this attack, our house signing was delayed because our realtor had no power. Almost everybody in our neighborhood has generators now and I had NO IDEA someone actually attacked the substation. So cool seeing my little town of wispering pines on a practical engineering video!