There has been much talk about the vulnerability of the nation's electricity grid in recent months, especially after a damaging attack on a Silicon Valley power substation last year.

The federal government has pledged to make power companies improve their protection of important equipment for the grid. But experts are unimpressed with rules proposed by the government — rules that were written by the power industry, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The draft regulations are "an embarrassment and an insult, because they don't go far enough," James Holler, a grid-security expert at Abidance Consulting, told the paper.

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Experts say the rules aren't strong enough to stop the bad guys. That's because they permit companies to make the call on what constitutes a true danger and what they should do to protect their equipment, The Journal reports.

Experts tell the paper that the regulations would allow all but a few hundred of the country's 55,000 transmission substations to ignore updated security rules.

Substations increase the voltage of electricity so it can travel long distances and then cut the voltage to manageable levels as the electricity approaches homes and businesses.

Ex-Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff discussed the threat to substations on Newsmax' "The Steve Malzberg Show" in February.

"Currently, we are very vulnerable to this type of a physical attack," he said. "It's been demonstrated to us now that there are people who have the training capability to perpetrate this type of attack and execute it."

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Related Stories:

• FERC Study: Power Grid Sabotage Could Cut Electricity Across US
• Energy Pro Licata: US Infrastructure Faces Major Cyber-Security Threat