By Rene Cowart, Senior Training and Safety Specialist, MEAG Power
As attacks on electric infrastructure have been on the rise, MEAG Power saw the need for law enforcement officers and other first responders to understand how to safely respond to physical security incidents at substations across its participant communities in Georgia.
Since launching our SAFER training program in 2024, we’ve trained more than 600 emergency responders in 24 of the 49 communities MEAG Power serves.
The program gives local law enforcement and fire departments an in-depth understanding of safety in and around electrical substations. The aim is to ensure that responders know how to recognize when there has been an incident and follow substation safety protocol to remain safe when on the premises.
The program is open to all emergency responders to substations in the participant community, including line crews, utility staff, firefighters, and law enforcement officers. For law enforcement, the training also counts towards credit hours they need for their annual Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training certification.
Each training consists of both classroom instruction and an onsite tour of a local substation to learn about substation equipment and relevant safety and security information. Every training is customized for the participant community and specific to substations in the area.
One of the most eye-opening parts of the training has been for the trainees to learn about recent unlawful events and the statistics on growing threats to electric infrastructure, whether through physical entry or from other threats such as drones or weapons. This includes learning what kind of threat information, and even attack plans, regularly appears on the dark web. Each training offers the most up-to-date statistics to reflect the latest threats.
MEAG Power is able to adapt each training as we are already familiar with the participant communities and engage with lineworkers through other trainings. We are very familiar with the substations across our participant communities and what equipment they have. In preparation for each training, we can often pull photos from our archive to review a specific community’s assets and tailor the content.
We’ve conducted multiple classes back-to-back in the same community, training as many as 100 officers in the same week. However, individual classes are kept small to keep the training effective, so this has meant sometimes holding one class in the morning and one in the afternoon.
MEAG Power’s goal is to provide the training to all of our participant communities over five years. Now in year three, our aim is to conduct one training per month to keep pace with the goal and the demand for the training. There is no minimum class size, so even if a participant community only has a few people they’d like to train, we’ll run the class for them. We’ve also done trainings that combined participants from multiple communities. Some trainees have included county representatives.
Feedback from participants in the program so far has been positive. Two communities have already re-trained or included additional staff to ensure all responders are prepared.
Our goal is to make first responders aware of how substations are used and how they can be targets of attacks. We keep eyes and ears open on the available information out there in an effort to keep our trainees as updated as possible and include as much as we can. We not only want to be sure responders are aware of vulnerabilities, we want to ensure they have the confidence to safely respond to any incidents.
As we look to how we can continue to enhance the trainings, we are tracking what threats are possible from the latest technology and thinking about what else first responders might want to know to support a seamless response. We’re glad to have seen the positive response to date, affirming the broad commitment across communities for a secure grid.
