Distribution Power Grid,I remember contracting for a local power grid company that was looking to perform a two billion dollar meter and infrastructure upgrade for the distribution grids they have. One of the focuses was on the AMI (Advanced Meter Infrastructure) head-end that communicated with all of the meters deployed in a distribution grid mesh network.


The AMI functionality enabled two-way communication with all the meters, whereas communications was previously only one-way, to the meter and not back. This two-way communication enabled remote administration with remote disconnection of power to a home or business.


Because the distribution grid covers all of the homes and businesses in the power company’s different domains, it has many more components than a transmission grid. So, it needs more analysis, particularly systems analysis to review Distribution Power Grid its design. The distribution grid has components it interacts with that are hardened IT like systems. I have concerns when reviewing the various dependencies between the distribution grid components and the hardened systems.

I’m concerned that a failure associated with the hardened systems could cause a failure in portions of the distribution grid. And worse yet, the architecture for one substation may be replicated at many substations thereby multiplying the weakness all Distribution Power Grid over an electrical provider’s network of distribution grid substations.

So, I recommend a systems analysis, particularly for distribution grids should be completed. Distribution Power Grid NIST controls for the grid can be reviewed, but for a systems review and not an audit. The audit is important, but I think the systems analysis is more important because the analysis will reveal holes in the electrical grid architecture that may not be found via an audit. Audits deal with known controls gaps and they don’t anticipate issues that are not related to one or more controls.