Public power started well before APPA did in 1940 — at least as far back as 1881 in Butler, Missouri. The model has grown to 2,000 communities across the most diverse geography and demographics imaginable. These communities not only met the challenge of building the original infrastructure, but also of navigating economic volatility, deregulation, overregulation, technological advancement, and changes in the modern customer relationship.
Upon our 85th anniversary this fall it’s tempting to dwell on our storied past and on our founding, when public power leaders from the West Coast to East, and many communities in between, came together to create our association. Our focus, however, is on the dynamic time upon us and on preparing for a future that seems ominous at times. As we gain wisdom from our past, public power will embrace the future with the dedication and innovation we’ve always brought to the toughest challenges.
It is appropriate that this issue of Public Power magazine bridges recognition of our anniversary with discussion of a new set of large challenges facing electric utilities regarding utility security and resilience. Security in all forms, including cyber and physical, creates an emerging set of requirements and attention that will demand constant and endless vigilance. Bringing the next generation of the workforce into our story, and our mission, including creating workplace cultures that prioritize security will be critical. In this issue, you will read about various cyber vulnerabilities and mitigation, you’ll hear how public power practices for the worst during security exercises to be better prepared for actual events, you’ll learn from a first-hand account of an actual cyberattack, and get insights into global threats as they relate to small utility security.
Public power communities were, and still are, the yardstick, envisioned by FDR and others, as the standard of accountability, of affordability, of reliability against which others can be measured. Now, we are stepping up to meet the technological needs of the next chapter of this public power story in a newly forged version of how we meet the needs of our communities.
In 1940, even as some of our utilities were still taking form, public power played a large role to provide the power to help the U.S. and allied war effort. That mission was part of the impetus for the joint action enabled by banding together into a national association. Today, our mission includes a type of defensive effort not imaginable in those early years — the comprehensive monitoring, detection, and mitigation of sophisticated cyberattacks, often from foreign states.
At APPA, we’ve ramped up our efforts to prioritize security and resilience of the grid. We’re working with various industry partners on increasing public power’s participation in national preparedness exercises and hosting custom regional exercises for utilities. We’ve developed and curated materials to support increased wildfire mitigation efforts among our members. We’ve built on our cooperative agreements with the Department of Energy to bring outside funding to public power to invest in cybersecurity technology, including a new agreement for $5 million to expand on our Cyber Shield program. These efforts all come back to how we can assist our members and how they can learn from each other’s struggles and successes. We have strength in numbers and together we can raise the bar and move the standard forward for a strong, resilient grid to serve public power communities.
