A recent study in the journal Safety Science suggested that the most vulnerable parts of the grid were the smallest, like neighborhood substations. 

“That’s a bunch of hooey,” says Seth Blumsack, Hines’s colleague at Penn State.

Hines and Blumsack’s recent study, published in the journal Chaos on Sept. 28, found just the opposite. Drawing on real-world data from the Eastern U.S. power grid and accounting for the two most important laws of physics governing the flow of electricity, they show that “the most vulnerable locations are the ones that have most flow through them,” Hines says. Think highly connected transformers and major power-generating stations. Score one point for common sense.

And score one point for distributed generation.