re: #8 Skip Intro

I see someone is assuming that, but I don’t see his evidence for that assumption.

As an electrician with some basic knowledge of the subject I would have to agree that the ex-chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Jon Wellinghoff’s statement is completely unfounded and not supported by the evidence. Unless facts to the contrary come to light I have to believe that this was nothing more than a vandal (or two) shooting more or less at random at the sub-station and hoping for some major “sparks” or an outage in reward for their efforts.

If I wanted to take out a sub-station, pretty much any sub-station, no matter how large, I would simply have to put a couple of shots into the [withheld by author so as not to inform vandals]. I find it extremely hard (impossible actually) to believe that multiple “well trained individuals” carried this out as a failed terrorist attack. Mainly for the very simple reason that if they were well trained and versed on the critical points of the sub-station then they would have succeeded in taking it offline.

Besides, hitting silicon valley wouldn’t net you anything, all those high tech processor production facilities have “uninterruptible” battery systems along with back-up generators. If you were going to hit something that was completely power critical you would go after the [again withheld by the author so as not to inform vandals] in the Tennessee valley area and cause tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in damage that could take months to repair fully.

Personally I believe the utility describing it as a random act of vandalism a lot more than I believe Jon Wellinghoff’s description of it as a failed terrorist attack. At least not until I see something besides his own supposition as evidence to the contrary.