Keeping our electricity supply safe

Security and infrastructure are important topics in the EU. The Member States are working proactively against occurrences on their territories, particularly since electric grids are now connected across borders and countries. The EU-funded project SESAME (Securing the European electricity supply against malicious and accidental threats) worked on an advanced solution to protect against such scenarios.

More specifically, the project developed a decision support system to protect power transmission, as well as distribution and generation systems. It created a software system that detects vulnerabilities and threats, while proposing protective measures and effective cost–benefit analyses for countermeasures. The project team also addressed market mechanisms that hinder protection. These include lack of incentives for building a secured infrastructure or inefficient regulatory and policy frameworks concerning infrastructure security.

Already, the project team has analysed sample blackouts to identify their causes and rank the threats. It designed a system for detecting structural vulnerability and an incident-response system to simulate the blackout after triggering events and restoration of the lost load. In addition, the team surveyed households in all EU Member States and businesses in 266 regions and 9 economic sectors to assess the economic impacts of power interruptions. This revealed that the European networks are facing new risks such as rapid market liberalisation and growing market interconnections.

Achievements include developing a risk management framework to strengthen the decision support system, effectively ranking threats and countermeasures.

Overall, the system includes a risk assessment tool to identify vulnerabilities in grids and plants, incorporating a tool to protect critical infrastructures against cascading effects caused by sabotage or terrorism. It also features a system for planning automatic restoration and intelligent reconfiguration in case of failure. This is in addition to a tool that assesses the potential impact of a failure.

The SESAME system will benefit not only single-nation grids but multi-national grids as well. It will keep the electricity supply that we depend on safer and more secure than ever.