Electric Infrastructure Security Council

Eis Council is addressing these combined, complex problems: urgent resilience gaps of our fragile, interdependent infrastructures and expanding, extreme threats and hazards. This year's accomplishments include:1. Bsx | initial us deployment and testingthe bsx system is a disaster emergency communication architecture approach, designed to function in a total blackout, enabling voice and high data rate communication spanning all sectors, with best-in-class protection against cyber, emp and other threats. Federal communications (fcc) certification was received for initial, commercial configurations of the high-capability radio layer recommended for this architecture, (continue on schedule o)the bnet sdr system on december 7, 2022, with an fcc independent testing laboratory certified that tested configuration was found to "comply with all requirements of part 27 of the fcc rules". In discussion with homeland Security for further testing to take place in 2024. In addition, the bsx phase 2 (a direct fiberoptic communication link between dominion virgina energy, exelon and pjm) was completed. 2. Ginom | expanded development and planningginom represents a new, unique capability, essential to navigate extreme disasters. The system is often described as a multicorporate simulation operating system (mos) for situational awareness and decision support during catastrophes. Allows ai-guided collaboration among companies and partners to prepare for or recover from extreme disasters. Achievements include: - the first phase of the ginom chaos management project, partially funded by a competitive award from the israel ministry of energy (imoe), was completed and presented to the ministry in june of 2023- following the successful acquisition of a 2nd competitive award, the second phase of the ginom imoe project began in june 2023, with the goal of increasing the realism of the ginom simulation engine and creating an enterprise-grade software framework and graphical user interface for setting up, running, and analyzing simulations.- ginom provided higher-fidelity simulation abilities for haifa and tel aviv, with complex scenarios, more user control, and higher-fidelity Electric, natural gas and emergency fuel apps with detailed gis data and detailed facility parameters.3. Black sky emergency power initiativethis program involves advisory services recommending adaptation and reconfiguration of emergency power systems of critical facilities in all sectors. Critical corporate facilities in all sectors will need to develop planning for duration-optimized use or reconfiguration of their emergency power systems, to enable scenario-adjusted prioritized power use. In some cases, existing emergency power systems may consider adding supplemental, hardened long duration power cells to enable continued operation of their most essential instruments during extended outages.in the fall of 2022, eis began to partner with gencell corporation, a hydrogen fuel cell company, to advise on deployment of power cells that offer power to instruments ranging from a few months to a year. The fuel cells can derive hydrogen from anhydrous ammonia, and thereby offer longer, more sustainable emergency power than traditional diesel generators. The applicability of fuel cells for emergency backup power, as well as the likelihood of future applications for Electric grid black start, was included in the blackstart handbook (see below).4. The epro blackstart handbookthis project is developing a peer-reviewed handbook, reporting on extensive research into the growing problems associated with blackstart (grid restart) capabilities, and recommendations for approaches to address these issues, both today and as the grid transitions to primarily renewable energy resources. Issues addressed: ensuring grid restart capabilities are not lost in the transition to renewables. Technology and policy changes needed as the grid shuts down large scale hydrocarbon generating stations, in its evolution toward distributed renewable resources. This year's accomplishments include: - eis Council received grant support for "epro handbook v: blackstart power restoration for a greener grid", a project to research and provide recommendations to address the diminishing capability for the u.s. and other nation's Electric power grids to black start. - the addition of dr. paul stockton, former assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense. Dr. stockton as the editor-in-chief of the handbook.5. Eis webinarseis convenes decision makers and experts in black sky hazards and resilience solutions, with outreach to a global audience. Eis Council informs interested people in the us and worldwide. Publicly available, free webinars take place regularly, featuring global leaders and experts ranging from national cyber directors to assistant defense secretaries, members of congress and a wide range of technology and policy experts, discussing critical, timely topics in Infrastructure resilience. Eis webinars continue to gain in status and participation. The webinars are usually held every other month and have consistently drawn registrations of 200-500 people. The webinars, by necessity, have the expert panel in discussion, while the "audience" can interject questions of comments via chat. Thanks to the interest of a broader audience, we increased our database of prospects to 15,000.6. Earth ex earth ex, is the world's largest multi-sector, multi-nation resilience exercise series, focused on preparations for extreme, black sky disasters. In its first five-years, more than 11,000 participants from more than 40 nations were engaged. Local emergency managers, health care and assisted living facilities were particularly appreciative for the training opportunities these unique exercises provided for vulnerable communities. Building on its remarkable history, plans are moving forward for a major upgrade: a new multi-player platform powered by ginom -- to enable, truly collaborative multicorporate black sky exercises, worldwide. Once complete, ginom mos will provide the vehicle for multicorporate simulation in the new earth ex platform. This will enable operators in different sectors to collaborate on recovery options in a wide variety of extreme disaster scenarios. While ginom's development continues, the earth ex team is hosting a series of onlineearth ex live! Exercises to test and optimize planning for the new platform.1. Earth ex reboot: raising the bar for disaster planning exercises. When complete, the upgrade will make earth ex a completely new, first-of-its-kind, highly engaging interactive experience, ready for the next five years and beyond.2. The reboot team: we engaged a creative team to integrate innovative and advanced ideas for opportunities for earth ex. The full Council staff joined by stakeholders and advisors for upgrade planning, including the ideas orlando team (world-class experts in development of advanced and complex exercise platforms).3. Preparation for 2023-4 organization-focused exercises:in parallel with the earth ex upgrade, we are now hosting a series of online black sky exercises. These are available and free to play at any time through our website. These scenarios include: cyber, electromagnetic pulse, megafires, extreme flooding.4. Earth ex live: the earth ex team enhanced earth ex by incorporating a live multi-sector exercise with audience involvement. Experts from different sectors discuss their approaches to dealing with large-scale scenarios that impact all sectors. Earth ex live on july 14, 2022, attracted 400 participants screens with over 700 registrations for the event. Our success in 2022, led to 35,000+ visitors on our earth ex 23 page and over 1000 registrants for the event, for the september 2023 event. 7. The resilient, renewable planet (r2p) conference, april 16-18, 2023the r2p global event hosted government and industry leaders, assembling scientists and researchers from the u.s., u.k., israel, australia and nations across europe, asia and africa. These participants considered urgent Infrastructure Security and resilience concerns while addressing critical climate change and environmental challenges. Speakers included u.k., u.s.; and israeli government officials; and other senior corporate executives from the u.s., israel, europe, and asia. R2p's success resulted in imperial college and eis creating a partnership to apply for the uk's proposed resilience hub initiative. The conference officially launched eis's human continuity project (hcp). Hcp is a unique, planetary-scale initiative to assemble and empower global leaders to address Infrastructure fragility, as an urgent priority.