Duke Energy execs brief state regulators on Moore County power station attack

Executives provided few new details, citing an ongoing federal investigation into the attack, which left 45,000 customers without power for days. The commission chair asked Duke Energy to brief the commission during a regularly scheduled commission meeting. The testimony lasted less than a half hour.

Sam Holeman, the company’s vice president of transmission system planning and operations, said the attacks never threatened the broader power grid. Rodney Hutcherson, Duke Energy’s vice president of construction and maintenance, said two substations went offline the night of Dec. 3. The first “tripped” at about 7:15 p.m., he said, and the second after 8:30 p.m.

Law enforcement in Moore County has said someone shot at both substations, causing damage that forced the shutdown. There’s a $75,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. Duke Energy took a third substation offline at about 9:15 p.m. the night of the attack to prevent potential damage as workers responded to problems at the first two stations, Hutcherson said.

Hutcherson said “there was a lot of equipment damaged,” but he didn’t go into detail citing the ongoing investigation. Bonnie Titone, the company’s senior vice president and chief information officer, said the FBI has taken the lead on that inquiry.

“We are collaborating with them on a daily basis,” she said. “And it has the utmost attention on a senior leadership level at Duke Energy.”

Titone also said investigators have told the company that they don’t believe there’s a connection between these attacks and shots fired on Wednesday near a separate power station in Ridgeway, South Carolina.

The N.C. Utilities Commission oversees Duke Energy and other utility companies in North Carolina, and among other things it approves long-range plans before they’re implemented. Any significant new security measures will face scrutiny from the commission, which has to sign off before costs can be passed along to customers.

“We’re going to take the lessons learned out of this and come up with an action plan, but it’s just too early to talk about the details,” Titone told commissioners Monday.

Commissioner Floyd McKissick, a former state lawmaker from Durham, said security measures will be important, but the costs will be “equally important” and should be “of substantial concern” to the company.

McKissick asked how much the initial response and repairs have cost the company. The executives said they were still assessing them.

Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Mitchell thanked the group for their testimony and Duke Energy employees for their work.

“I can imagine it was a very scary situation for those customers,” she said.