Building Resilience and Recoverability of Electric Grid Communications
Table 3 . Substation Communications by Technology and Carrier
Fiber optic communication requires intermediate amplifiers , approximately one every 80 miles . We estimate 450,000 fiber miles for transmission and 250,000 fiber miles for distribution . By totaling transmission miles and allocating one amplifier per 80 miles , we estimate 8,750 fiber amplifiers .
Based on FCC data for radio licenses held by utilities , we estimate 4,570 radio base stations in the U . S . electric grid .
Systemwide Costs for Protection
We estimate total protection costs to be approximately $ 21 billion , subdivided by eight categories . For each category , we multiply the number of sites by the protection costs per site . We add the subtotals to determine the total cost of protection . This methodology is displayed in Table 4 below .
Table 4 . EMP Protection for the U . S . Grid Using Stirling Engines
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