Co-op's, regulators, & manual options

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Our local, rural co-op's foreman stopped by our farm today for an unrelated reason. I asked him what his involvement was with Y2K repairs. He knew nothing except that "they" were working on the *software* problem at the facility from which the co-op buys its power. He was not aware of the embedded systems problem, but confirmed that the co-op does have embedded systems in its regulators. He assured me there would be no problems in the Y2K! So I asked him what he would do if he knew 30% of the circuit boards in the regulators were going to fail, all at once. He responded, his men could simply switch the regulators back to manual, ie they would cease to regulate (the chip function?) but that the electricty would still flow. Does this mean that remote rural co-ops still have manual transmission functionality? (Ignoring other obstacles such as generation).

-- Anonymous, July 15, 1998

Answers

I spent Tuesday of last week with a top-ten G&T coop in the southern U.S. Their Operations Manager related to me that one of their member distribution coop's (roughly 20,000 meters) was always on the bleeding edge of technology, and had a lot of 'state of the art' relaying - microprocessor based, date involvement, and no manual workarounds. Didn't know if the protective relays were compliant or not. This is but one example.

From my perspective, the answer to your question is, small and rural does not equal "no problem". As with all electric companies, it depends on equipment configurations and the age of the system.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 1998


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