ORLANDO, Fla. — On a cool February evening, federal agents descended on a Waterford Lakes home – and set off a firestorm.

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Their target, Brandon C. Russell, was accused of plotting to bring down the Baltimore, MD power grid through a series of attacks to substations surrounding the city.

For years, extremists have known substations are a weak point in urban infrastructure. While other facilities like power plants are heavily guarded, substations are most often surrounded by a simple chain link fence.

By shooting into a facility, a person could take it offline.

READ: North Carolina power substation shot weeks after power grid attacks

“People do understand that this particular part of infrastructure -- substations -- are extremely vulnerable,” Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said.

While one substation may not be missed for long and power companies have ways of rerouting electricity around it, the grid is known to be vulnerable to attacks involving multiple, with experts like Wellinghoff warning only a few dozen would have to be compromised for the entire grid to go offline for weeks or months.

Russell and his accused co-conspirator, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, chose Baltimore in part because they noticed its substations formed a ring around the city, making it easy to pick off the most critical feeders, documents said.

READ: Burglaries at 3 substations lead to thousands without power in Washington

That same setup can be found in Orlando and The Villages, with substations surrounding people’s homes and businesses.

WFTV visited a dozen locations over the span of a few weeks, of which only one was protected by more than a chain link fence that couldn’t stop bullets or block lines of sight.

Carter Manucy, who focuses on security for the Florida Municipal Power Agency, acknowledged that many of the measures taken at each site depended on the age of the substation and cost.

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“We’re trying to be aware of how much that costs the ratepayers and everything else, because all those costs have to come down to the folks paying the bills,” Manucy said.

With attacks against substations rising, Manucy said companies were reexamining defenses, but said there was little one can do to stop a person determined to attack a site. He said redundancy to the system was key.

He said the fact that agents caught up to Russell before the attack was carried out was an example of good law enforcement and partnerships between them and energy companies, and hoped the nation was in a transitory period, before attacks could routinely be caught sooner in the planning process.

READ: Orange County mass shooting: What we know about the suspect

SEE: officers surround Orlando home of neo-Nazi suspected of plotting to attack Baltimore power grid SEE: officers surround Orlando home of neo-Nazi suspected of plotting to attack Baltimore power grid

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