I remember reading a commentary on the cybersquirrel1 site introducing this "event" along the lines of: "In one of our more unusual operations..."

What this site beautifully illustrates is the entirely lax physical security of power substations and other distribution infrastructure that hundreds or thousands of households depend on. A distributed, coordinated human effort could destroy enough infrastructure to cause multiple days if not weeks of no electricity for a significant area. The kind of damage that would require the infrastructure to need rebuilding from scratch, or close to it.