On the one hand, “attacks” on the grid have been going on for decades, but most of them are/were benign. Usually, the festive shooting of insulators on transmission lines in the woods, or celebratory shooting of pole-top transformers on July 4th in “the hood” were the extent of such activity.
But history has a number of cases where things were much more damaging, or potentially damaging. Loosening bolts on a transmission line tower so that it would fail in a storm. One incident, the perp disabled control wiring in a substation, then rigged up a cable across some railroad tracks in an effort to take down a substantial portion of the grid in his area. He even took liberty of operating some heavy excavating equipment that was parked in the area. He was caught, of course.
But these events have increased in some areas. Out west in Oregon and Washington state, and the recent activity in NC show that people are acting and it doesn’t necessarily appear to be random. The NC action, in particular - either the perp(s) were extremely lucky or they knew where to go to inflict the most trouble with a single effort.
I have been off work on leave for a couple of weeks, but I do check my email and there is an effort within the industry to increase awareness of this kind of activity - to be on alert, and to share any information within the industry immediately.
Could it be........ELF?