AFTER announcing its partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy last July for the island’s first smart grid project, a new initiative that will help consumers monitor their power usage, the Guam Power Authority will be adopting a cyber security plan as part of the conditions of the USDOE grant.
Half of the more than $33 million project cost will be shouldered by the federal agency. The project will entail replacing 50,000 commercial and residential meters connected to GPA’s current system in order to shift to the new technology. Just this month, GPA selected the Gridstream RF advanced metering solution to install advanced meters and Gridstream network components all over the island.
With the new technology in place, consumers will be able to get on a portal on the Internet, download data pertaining to their power consumption, and make energy-saving decisions based on the information.
The resolution proposing the cyber security measures was recently approved during the last Consolidated Commission on Utilities meeting.
According to the resolution, a “cyber security plan has become a best practice in public power utilities in the mainland and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has mandated that all public power utilities in North America maintain such a plan with a focus towards ensuring the U.S. grids are protected from outside threats.”
Plan
GPA, in conjunction with Black & Veatch, has prepared a cyber security plan, which will “require some significant changes in the way GPA conducts its business.” These changes include “security checks for all vendors with access to critical assets of [GPA] as well as security checks for all employees of [GPA].”
Although the USDOE grant requirement will expire eventually, the power utility expressed its intention in the resolution to integrate the plan into their normal operating procedures.
In compliance with the plan, the power utility has invested around $500,000 to purchase servers. In addition to ongoing maintenance costs of approximately $600,000 every four years, an additional capital expenditure of around $1.5 million is also required for the implementation of the plan.
According to the executive summary on the smart grid project, GPA has investigated several cyber security frameworks including the Department of Homeland Security Catalog of Control System Security and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards, among others.
