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What’s New: A real world case study of the impact of GPS jamming on electrical grids. Installation of anti-jam antennas seems to have helped.
Why It’s Important: GPS signals are used by virtually every technology and many, many applications, yet few people understand the vulnerabilities and cascading problems that can arise when GPS is disrupted.
What Else to Know:
- PNT is used in at least ten different ways by electrical grids (graphic courtesy of Mitre Corp):
- The efficiency, safety, and interoperability of electrical grids going forward will depend more and more on PNT. See the North American Synchrophasor Initiative, for example. If the source continues to be only GPS, system vulnerabilities will grow. We know the issue is being worked, and hope it proceeds apace.
- Some electrical grid officials have said they don’t need GPS to operate their systems, just to manage them. – We suspect an unmanageable power grid is a bad thing..
Staring down another frigid winter and desperate to keep the lights on, Ukraine’s power grid operator has surreptitiously imported custom-built equipment designed to withstand Russian electronic warfare attacks with the help of US officials, CNN has learned.
Engineers at US tech giant Cisco spent weeks building and stress-testing the new gear in a lab in Austin, Texas, and delivered a prototype to Ukraine in the spring with the help of a US Air Force plane carrying humanitarian aid, according to Cisco.
After Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, quietly confirmed the new equipment worked despite Russian attacks on its GPS systems, Cisco shipped dozens of the pizza box-sized hardware kits worth an estimated $1 million to Ukraine, where they were installed across the country, Ukrenergo executives told CNN.
