National Report Cites January “Threat” at FPP

The national media outlet Politico.com published a story Sunday about an increase in attacks and threats to the electric grid across the nation. According to the story, one of those threats took place in Fayette County on Jan. 13.

Energy reporter Catherine Moorehouse documented 60 physical attacks, cyber attacks or threats to the nation’s electric infrastructure between January and March of this year. She collected data from the Department of Energy (DOE), which requires electric utilities to document “electric disturbance events.”

The DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response publishes a summary of these events on its website. The summary described the Jan. 13 event as a “Physical threat to its Facility excluding weather or natural disaster related threats, which has the potential to degrade the normal operation of the Facility.

Or suspicious device or activity at its Facility.”

The summary said the event began at midnight that day and ended at 1 p.m. The event did not result in outages for any electric customers. The summary does not identify the facility.

The Record contacted the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) to inquire whether the Jan. 13 event involved the Fayette Power Project, the 1,600 megawatt coal-fired power plant outside La Grange.

LCRA spokesperson Clara Tuma stated, “Any information about or from the report you asked about would have to come from the Department of Energy.”

Lt. David Beyer of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office said no one notified the Sheriff’s Office about an incident involving the power plant on Jan. 13.

This week the Record filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOE to obtain the DOE-417 form that documented the Jan. 13 event. The DOE is reviewing our request.

“Law enforcement officials have blamed much of the rise in grid assaults on white nationalist and far-right extremists, who they say are using online forums to spread tactical advice on how to shut down the power supply,” Moorehouse wrote in the Politico article.