Whether the contributors to our publication work for utilities, manufacturers, software developers, field workers, consultants, etc., they each play a part in an interconnected system. Because they are all pushing to create and maintain a reliable, modernized grid that will meet an ever-increasing demand for more energy, none of them who want to be part of the industry's future can afford to be an island.

Folks working in electric energy understand that terms like load, flexibility, switch, and circuit have meanings that differ from those for energy consumers. Even the word “power” does not mean the same thing to a utility as it does to a consumer, who is an athlete or a voter at the polls.

As I went through the articles for this issue, I noticed another term with multiple meanings, "visibility". Visibility means different things to different people in the electric utility space, which is why I wanted to look at how two different articles approach the term.

Seeing the storm before it strikes

In their article on building a weather-ready grid, Chris Goode with Climavision and Matt Lanza with CenterPoint Energy write about the importance of a systemwide resiliency plan and how such a plan can help utilities know in advance not just that a storm is coming, but what it will do, where it will hit and how severe it will be at the neighborhood level, leaving enough lead time to prepare a meaningful response.

As Goode and Lanza explain, when Hurricane Beryl struck in 2024, CenterPoint Energy, which provides electrical power to the Houston metro area, suffered 2 million customer outages. In response, CenterPoint set out to future-proof its electric infrastructure and operations. As they explored their plan, CenterPoint opted not to account only for extreme weather, but for every facet of weather that affects CenterPoint's ability to deliver power to customers consistently. CenterPoint brought in weather technology company Climavision to implement the plan.

CenterPoint had an opportunity to put its new capability into action this past October, before thunderstorms it had identified several days earlier, knocked out power to nearly 200,000 customers.

In the past, using publicly available weather model data alone, CenterPoint's meteorologists had only been able to identify "chances of strong to severe thunderstorms." Using Climavision's HI-RES model suite, however, CenterPoint could now forecast the risk of 50 to 70 mph wind gusts in the Houston area.

By working with the weather technology company Climavision, CenterPoint Energy shifted its perspective on weather from an unpredictable risk factor to a measurable operational asset. This approach makes it more resilient to extreme events and more efficient, sustainable and reliable.

CenterPoint's visibility problem was about seeing the physical world clearly enough to act on it. What's the storm doing? Where exactly will it hit? How severe will the wind gusts be at the neighborhood level? Their visibility was meteorological and geographic: knowing what is happening, where and when, with enough precision and enough lead time to deploy people and resources before the threat arrives.

Losing sight, losing control

Where Goode and Lanza address what utilities need to see regarding weather, Rafael Narezzi, CEO of Centrii, is concerned with what utilities need to see within their own systems.

In "What the Poland Grid Attack Reveals About Battery Storage Risks," Narezzi writes about the role a different type of visibility plays in his part of the electric energy world.

Early in his article, Narezzi sets the stage with an anecdote about how, in the film "Ocean's Eleven," the criminals use a device called a "pinch" to generate a powerful electromagnetic pulse that shuts down power across the Las Vegas Strip. In this scenario, security systems fail, cameras go dark, and chaos ensues.

Narezzi uses this scene to show that when operators can no longer see their assets, when telemetry goes dark and the signals stop flowing, they lose visibility, which means they lose control.

He then segues to a real-life cyberattack on Poland's energy infrastructure that occurred in 2025. As Narezzi explains, rather than targeting a single large generating station, the attackers focused on the distributed edge of the grid, disrupting communications and operational visibility across multiple facilities. By disrupting communications rather than physical equipment, the attackers came within striking distance of eliminating operator visibility into a quarter of Poland's energy mix, in temperatures approaching -15°C.

The attack was ultimately contained through network segmentation and rapid response. Still, the lesson it delivered is clear. In a decentralized grid, losing sight of your assets means losing control of your system, and a lack of visibility means that control becomes guesswork.

Narezzi notes that because they balance supply and demand, stabilize frequency and help integrate intermittent renewable generation, BESS are rapidly becoming central to grid stability. It makes sense then that global BESS deployment is expanding quickly. As BESS deployment accelerates, cybersecurity risks are becoming increasingly relevant to utilities and operators.

What is particularly sobering about Narezzi's visibility argument is that the infrastructure in Poland was mostly intact. No turbines were destroyed. No substations went dark. The attack was informational — and that was enough. As the grid becomes more decentralized and more dependent on software-driven systems like battery storage, the communications layer connecting assets to operators becomes as critical as the physical infrastructure itself.

Narezzi lists key cybersecurity measures utilities and storage operators should prioritize to address these risks. These measures, which include "real-time visibility across operational technology environments" at the top of the list, help ensure that distributed energy resources remain both visible and controllable, even during inevitable cyber incidents.

Storms don't wait for utilities to modernize their weather intelligence. Cyberattackers don't pause while operators upgrade their OT security. The pressure on the grid is continuous, and it's increasing. What CenterPoint and the operators responding to Poland's cyberattack have in common isn't their technology or their threat environment — it's the standard they're held to. When the lights go out, nobody asks whether the outage was caused by a hurricane or a hacker. They want the power back on. Visibility is what makes that possible. Resilience is what it adds up to.

If you would like to contribute an article on an interesting project, please email me: Elisabeth@ElectricEnergyOnline.com

Elisabeth