State Rep. Andrea Boland has again been invited to London to attend the annual international summit of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council at the House of Commons in Parliament. Boland authored the first legislation ever passed to compel electric companies to protect their transmission systems against solar storm threats. She was a speaker at last year’s summit, and will be speaking at another summit in San Francisco. Other states are beginning to follow Maine’s lead.

On the same theme, a film crew from California will be traveling to Maine to interview Boland for the upcoming documentary film, “Racing With the Sun,” on the electric grid’s vulnerability to an extreme solar storm ”“ which experts agree is 100 percent probable, and will take down the grid for months or years if not protected, resulting in enormous loss of life.

Boland emphasizes that, “This sort of catastrophic event is essentially not survivable unless we get the available, proven, low-cost protections installed. A man-made electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon can do the same and is a major defense threat.”

Coincidentally, the film crew is expected in Sanford during the upcoming Sanford Film Festival this weekend. The trailer can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvkR4fBwMlw.

Rachel Sherman, Springvale