California power substation breached again

Thieves have broken into a South San Jose, Calif., electrical substation, the same station that suffered a sniper attack last year.

The Wednesday incident is exposing Pacific Gas & Electric to further criticism that it does not have adequate security measures at the Metcalf substation to protect the electrical grid. This week’s theft is being investigated by the California’s utility commission, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

{mosads}In this week’s incident, thieves made off with multiple pieces of construction equipment, including soil compactors, pipe threaders and a cart, the Mercury News said. The thieves broke in, despite about $100 million in security upgrades at various substations after the April 2013 attack.

The thieves set off an alarm at about 2 a.m. Wednesday. PG&E did not report the incident to authorities for hours

The April sniper attack knocked out multiple transformers, resulting in more than $15 million in damage. It knocked out the substation, straining the electrical grid, though it did not cause any blackouts.

Both breaches are unsolved.

PG&E told the Mercury News it is committed to finding out what happened.

“We want to prevent these incidents from happening again,” a spokesman said. “We want to find any problems and fix them right away.”