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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Nov. 16 slapped Pacific Gas & Electric with a violation for changing an earthquake testing methodology in 2013 without adequate justification. “This violation is of very low safety-significance and does not challenge the seismic safety of the facility,” said Blair Jones, PG&E spokesperson. He said the utility has subsequently provided additional documentation. High winds knocked out power in the Los Angeles area Nov. 16. Toppled trees hitting power lines and other wind damage caused some 56,000 Los Angeles Department of Water & Power customers to lose power. A cold front moved through in the wake of a fast moving storm that dusted mountains with snow and caused scattered showers in the metropolitan area. Winds also caused isolated outages in Southern California Edison territory, including for some 4,200 customers in Alhambra and more than 2,100 customers in Seal Beach. Winds had subsided in the area by Nov. 17. SoCal Gas is struggling to plug a leak at its Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility near the city of Santa Clarita in the Los Angeles metro area and the California Public Utilities Commission, Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources, and other agencies are carefully watching. The company said Nov. 17 that its crews discovered a leak in a well at the site Oct. 23 and have been injecting a brine solution down the well to stop it so it can be safely plugged. However, the company had to cease pumping the brine Nov. 16 due to high winds in the area. The leaking well, according to SoCal Gas, is at the top of a hill and more than a mile from any residents or public areas. However, the utility acknowledges that residents have complained about the mercaptan odor from the leak. Mercaptan, a compound containing sulfur, is added to gas as a safety measure so people can smell any leaks that occur. Neither it nor natural gas poses any imminent health danger at the levels involved, but mercaptan odor can trigger nausea, headaches, and dizziness. On Nov. 16, smoke inside the California Independent System Operator’s Alhambra control center led to an evacuation and power shut down. “This impacted essential information technology systems that were running from the Alhambra data center. System operations were immediately moved to Folsom operations center,” the grid operator stated. Although market and reliability systems were impacted, the grid operator insited that grid reliability was maintained. There were high winds in the area but the grid operator provided no details as to the source of the smoke. Government agencies and industry conducted a two-day exercise to test the ability of the U.S. power infrastructure regulators and operators to respond to and recover from cyber and physical attacks. “The events in Paris do present a heightened awareness of potential attacks,” Gerry Cauley, North American Electric Reliability Corp. president, said Nov. 19. The lead federal agency on crisis management of the grid is the Department of Energy. This week’s safety and recovery exercise, involving 350 participants from public and private entities, focused on how best to share information following an attack or attacks, overcoming regulatory barriers and how best to integrate private and public efforts, said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, DOE undersecretary. “We need to exercise our muscles to become stronger,” she added. No specifics were provided of the joint exercise or responses to individual attacks, such as occurred at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in San Jose.

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