Building Resilience and Recoverability of Electric Grid Communications
several months . This investment should yield benefits that far outweighing the expenditure . A report issued by the National Institute of Building Sciences indicates that for every dollar invested in hazard mitigation , six dollars are saved during restoration ( Center for Disaster Philanthropy , 2018 ).
It is also helpful to estimate the per capita cost of protection and place that figure in the context of other money that consumers spend on utilities . For example , the average monthly cable TV bill is approximately $ 217 ( Consumer Reports , 2019 ) and the average monthly electricity bill is approximately $ 115 ( Energy Information Administration , 2019 ). In comparison , our total estimate of $ 21.2 billion for protection spread out over 135 million electric utility ratepayers and ten years would be just $ 1.31 per month .
Paying for EMP Protection
Protecting against existential threats such as a prolonged outage of the national grid provides “ an opportunity of convergence ” in which multiple agencies can collaborate to respond to a common challenge . By taking a more comprehensive , all-hazards approach to risk mitigation , EMP protection could be incorporated as part of the cost for improving resilience related to severe weather . Technology that enhances resilience of utility infrastructures to lightning and transients caused by severe storms also serves in the events of solar storms , attacks from RF weapons , and atmospheric-based EMP attacks .
Many programs exist at the federal and state level to fund EMP protection for the communications infrastructure . Sources of funding include tax credits , loan guarantees , and grants . The FCC offers grants under its Federal Service Fund , a program established in 1997 to facilitate the deployment and adoption of fixed and mobile telecommunications and broadband services . Through its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund , the FCC also incentivizes utilities that bring 5G cellular capacity and high-speed broadband services to rural areas . FEMA offers grants for pre-disaster resilience . Grants are also available from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Agriculture .
Conclusion
The U . S . electric grid is an immense machine operated by more than 3,000 utilities . Insufficient consideration has been given to assessing how targeted investments can boost its resilience and recoverability . While individual utilities may be able to estimate costs for protecting their respective parts of the grid and its equipment components , the task of assessing costs for systemwide protection can seem insurmountable . Lacking this data , it is difficult inform policymakers regarding societal benefits in relation to financial costs . Inaction results .
In this paper we demonstrate how a straightforward methodology of multiplying per-unit protection costs by the number of units to be protected can result
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