The power grid relies on thousands of aging, hand-built transformers. If enough fail, the blackout could last years.
Photo illustration by Justin Metz
By Christopher Cox
Christopher Cox traveled to California and Nevada and interviewed more than two dozen experts in grid technologies and grid reliability.
Aug. 18, 2026Updated 9:20 a.m. ET
The snipers had been shooting for nearly 10 minutes before someone called 911. A man driving down the highway told the police he thought he heard fireworks as he passed Pacific Gas and Electric’s Metcalf electrical substation, 15 miles southeast of San Jose. An engineer at a nearby power plant said he thought it was gunfire. Maybe more calls would have come in, but the communication link between the substation and PG&E, along with several phone and internet cables, had been severed. It was April 16, 2013.
The shooters — two, maybe more — took up positions 30 to 40 yards outside the substation fence, in the dry scrubland near Coyote Creek. At 1:31 a.m., after a security camera recorded what looked like a signal from a flashlight, they began firing high-powered rifles into the facility. Sparks flew into the air whenever the bullets grazed the chain-link fence, but most of the shots hit their apparent targets: a row of truck-size power transformers, which step down high-voltage electricity to lower voltages so it can be sent to local homes and businesses. Because this was Silicon Valley, those customers included some of the largest tech companies in the world.
After some 120 shots, 17 of Metcalf’s transformers had been disabled. The attackers knew to aim for the units’ cooling systems, oil-filled fins similar to those on a radiator, which draw heat away from the electrified core. That allowed the oil, 52,000 gallons of it, to drain out slowly so that the transformers wouldn’t fail right away, which would have triggered an alarm. The gunmen could take their time.
At 1:50 a.m., there was another flicker from a flashlight, and the shooting stopped. One minute later, the police arrived at the substation, but by then, the shooters were gone. The police looked around and, finding nothing suspicious, left as well. It wasn’t until a utility worker arrived at 3:15 a.m. that the extent of the damage was clear.
