[antidoh]

Bringing Sandy grids back up depended in part on loaned electrical workers from all over the region and country.

If more regions or a large part of the country is affected, that's going to be hard or impossible.

Providers don't staff for that kind of disaster, they rely in part on each other.

[roc]

To be fair, Sandy-related grid repair needed loaner crews because damage was widespread. An electronic attack would only need loaner crews if they could exploit things to the point that equipment was damaged.

The more likely case is that power would be down until the stations could be disconnected, computers brought back online and the station brought back up in an orderly fashion -- not unlike the situation in 2003, where extra line crews were largely unnecessary.

Though if such an attack could cause physical damage to transmission or generation equipment, I don't think even loaner crews would help much. Downtime would likely be gated by how quickly new equipment could be made and shipped.

If they could damage notably more parts than are annually made for replacement/expansion... it could be much worse than widespread downed lines.