These days the power utilities are trying awful hard to get my unconditional love and trust yet, they have nothing more substantial to offer me than sweet talk in return. Where's the ring?

If they do manage to be compliant by June 30th it seems to me that they are a tad late to the altar. They already left me standing there alone on 12/31/98. Remember, this is an industry that has claimed for months it had "no problem." Even while sending out carefully worded pamphlets that say "While we can't guarantee that we will have full power due to the so called Y2k computer bug we at XYZ Power will continue to do our utmost to provide the safe and reliable power that our customers rely on....."

I say SHOW ME THE MONEY. Guarantee that NO outages will occur due to Y2k. Get libel or get real.

If there are going to be NO problems - NONE - then put your money where my mouth is. Guarantee to feed me and my kids for as long as it takes or shut up.

Because I love my kids a helluva lot more than I do an industry that has already proven it has trouble with commitment.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 1999

Answers

R,

If you have a power company that makes a guarantee of no outages in 1998, 1999, 2000, or whenever, I suggest you accept the ring and go to the justice of the peace if it's too late for the church.

No company can guarantee zero outages due to the nature of the electric generation, transmission and distribution system. What can be stated is what NERC stated, that the reliability of the power system will be the same on 01/01/2000 as it was on 01/01 of any year.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

"What can be stated is what NERC stated, that the reliability of the power system will be the same on 01/01/2000 as it was on 01/01 of any year"

It can be stated. But is it so?

Cf. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

cl, They are NOT stating that there will be no power outages ever. That would just makes us folks up here laugh. We have power outages every winter - usually a dozen or so. They last anywhere from a few hours to a week or more.

What I take issue with is that they are saying they will have none due to Y2k. I don't expect them to feed my kids when power goes down (as it will) for normal reasons. However, consider the following.

Mainframes PCs Embedded Systems SCADAs Non-Compliant Vendors GPS-Telco problems Solar Flares (more potential Telco fun) Cessation of all oil imports

Utility companies are claiming that they will definitely continue to have power on 1/1/00 inspite of all of the above. I find that a tad hard to swallow.

However, since they are so sure of themselves I'd like to see them back it up with liability. Because I will surely be the one left holding the bag if they can't come through on their promises.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

R - I absolutely agree that they are late at the altar. I had to make a decision sometime ago to buy a wood stove to protect the well-being of my family. The utilities and agencies needed to be as ready as they could be at an early enough stage (like LAST year) so the rest of us would have an opportunity to determine what was left to be done on a personal level. As far as I am concerned, being ready at this late date is simply irresponsible. And, of course, the costs of their last minute flurries (which they claim were not needed because no critical issues were found) will be passed on to us.

The date guarantee I would most like to hear is January 3rd - that is the date the New England grid is most concerned about as major customers come back on line.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

R posted: "Mainframes PCs Embedded Systems SCADAs Non-Compliant Vendors GPS- Telco problems Solar Flares (more potential Telco fun) Cessation of all oil imports"

Babble, babble, babble,

You might as well write: Nuts, bolts, welds, strain bus, bad crimping.

Those have probably caused more outages than all of the above combined, and probably will post Y2K. Its obvious these are just words that you stumbled across in surfing the web but dont have any idea of what they do and what problems may or may not occur because of them. GPS being the dead give away.

No doctor, lawyer, auto mechanic ever gives a 100% guarantee but all of a sudden people are demanding it of the power companies.

I dont know what you do for a living R but do you give a 100% guarantee on everything you do? Somehow I doubt it.

-- Anonymous, May 12, 1999

R,

Great News!!!

I was able to locate that electric service provider you mentioned and I have successfully talked them into a 100%, absolute, no questions asked, written guarantee. I called XYZ Utilities, made an appointment, went to discuss service reliability and ended up spending hours negotiating with them face to face and toe to toe. I have a wife and child as well so I was brutal in my demands and guess what! I won out. Imagine that!! I got my guarantee.. and in writing!!!

My demands were really very simple but I thought that since I was there I would see if I could talk them into a full guarantee.. that is to say no outage, no brownouts, for any reason including reasons related to the Year 2000 rollover. They even succumbed to my insistent demands to place a Y2K compliant digital voltage recorder on my service prior to the rollover to monitor the incoming power. Of course, I will bear the cost of the recorder and installation but thats only fair, right? Its only $1400 any way. But at least I will not have to go through all the heartache of trying to prove I had a problem because my big new diesel generator planned for my back yard will start automatically to feed my newly planned bank of deep cycle batteries stored in a large ventilated underground storage facility located 100 yards from my new home and just east of the diesel fuel storage tanks that will store enough fuel for 120 days. But then, I will not have to run the diesel generator all the time because my new solar farm they plan to install will recharge my battery bank throughout the daylight hours and will be backed up with my 4 dependable wind generators located at each corner of my property. They have also promised to install all service cables and control electronics underground to protect them from lightning or animal intrusion and, in addition, they have promised to remove any and all vegetation hazards within 500 yards of my home. I know this sounds like a lot of money for someone like us to spend for reliable power but just think if my lights even flicker, they have promised, in writing, to pay my full power bill for the entire month of January 2000. Isnt that great!!!

-- Anonymous, May 14, 1999

I am perfectly fine living for days or weeks without power. What I can not stand is the hypocrisy and double-speak of those who are paid to lie for a living. Anyone who tells me they can guarantee there will be no outages due to Y2k has their head up their ass. You know it, I know it, Bennet et al know it. So why doesn't PG&E know it? If PG&E would be forthcoming and admit that they can't promise no Y2k related outages then I could motivate my neighbors into at least basic preparations. I live in one of those "Rural areas in the Northwest" which has been mentioned more than once as being likely to experience power failures of unknown frequency and duration.

There are people up here on life support who will die if power goes off for a few minutes - let alone a few weeks. We have enough back up power up in this county to last us THREE days!!!! That includes generators etc... The utility companies are disregarding peoples lives and safety. If they are so damn sure that this little county will have no problems due to Y2k - Just as they have been declaring at one town hall meeting after another - then I want some guarantees. I want that PR guy accessible and accountable. I want to see rice and beans and firewood stacked up. Because it is his brainless happy-talk blather which is stopping my neighbors from preparing AT ALL!!!!!!

-- Anonymous, May 17, 1999

The continuing debate over the Y2k problem, both civil and uncivil, has begun to interest me more and more as we travel the highway toward this once in a lifetime event. An event of our own making. Lets forget, as if we havent already, that the rollover will not, NOT bring in a new millenium, but simply begin the last year of the old. This is being rather picky I suppose but I hope to be around for the real new millenium celebration on January 1, 2001. Will the debate end on January 1, 2000. Hardlydebate will continue on with who was right and who was wrong and every electric interruption that occurs will be picked to pieces to determine if it was Y2k related. This is just one more blunder in a long, long history of human errors that we will survive. You will notice that I do not profess that we will learn anything from this.. we rarely seem to, so why would we expect this event to be any different.

A utility employee for 30+ years, I have worked in generation, transmission and distribution systems for some lets see (calculating.. hmmm.. sweet Jesus)60% of my life. I wonder if that qualifies me as an expert on utility operations? Maybe, maybe not there are many younger, smarter, even brilliant engineers out there today that are dedicated to their field of expertise. But then, I do not claim any measure of special knowledge, extraordinary skills or clairvoyance that would help exterminate this insidious bug. I can tell you this! I worked in this industry before there was reliable protective relaying, electronic monitoring systems, plant protection systems and automated distribution systems. Some of the best training I ever received was in the midst of real time system failures that no simulator could begin to duplicate. If there is anything I have learned, it is that electric service delivery is better, more dependable today than it have ever been.

Actually, it seems incredibly strange to me that my escalating fascination and amusement with this issue seems to lie, not so much in the problem itself, but in the participants in this forum and the interaction between outsiders and insiders alike. By amusement I do not mean to say that the potential for disruption is funny. Far from it! I have a family too you see. As do thousands of others in the industry. Like those others, I am very confident in my companys ability to serve our customers reliably before, during and after the rollover. But make no mistake here! My greatest level of confidence is in my company, my co-workers and our employees because I know them. I have first hand knowledge of their expertise, determination and work ethic. As for all the other companies across the US and Canada well, again, I retain a high confidence level. I have attended conferences, exchanged views and data, poured over countless articles, memos, databases, websites and other forms of information exchange from both sides of the fence. I have seen few instances or little credible evidence to support the contention that the industry as a whole is headed for a melt down. But I think everyone really knows or is beginning to see that anyway. Will there be interruptions? I think so. Can the industry deal with them? Sure, we have before and we will again.

Curiously, the idea of islanding seems to reappear much too often and I do have a personal view on this point. If you, as a customer, do not have complete and utter confidence in your companys ability to meet this challenge head on, why would you even consider supporting isolation from the grid? This bug just may strike our collective windshield on January 1, and if it does, wouldnt you rather be riding in a Mack truck than a Yugo. Yeah, this may be a rather simplistic view, but even with the high level of confidence I hold for my company, I simply could not support this action. Utility customers benefit significantly from their interconnections economically but also in increased reliability and system security. Why place that at risk? I would be interested in other views on this issue.

As for my company, we will soon (most probably prior to June 30th) be able to announce that we are fully completed and prepared to meet our obligations to our customers during rollover and beyond. As a matter of fact, I can say that as of today we have repaired or updated our transmission, distribution and enough of our generation systems to meet or exceed our internal demand and external obligations. Our contingency plans are in place and we have stockpiled additional reserves of fuel. Does this mean we will shutdown our efforts and dissolve our Y2K task force? No way! We are responsible for an essential customer service that we do not take lightly and it is in the best interests of our customers that we continue our efforts. We will be on the job at rollover.

Speaking from the perspective of an insider and an electric consumer myself, I feel we, in the industry, have an obligation to share our status, and I strongly support everyones right to know and ask questions. It is in this forum that I find this happens most often. However! What I find most fascinating and amusing is the consistency with which some outsiders tend to viscerally demand answers coupled with honesty and then fail miserably to recognize either.

I have often read posts from Dan the Power Man, CL, the Engineer, yes even FactFinder and others that were wholly consistent with fact and matched, often very specifically, what we are finding in our corporate systems. Yet, their efforts are met with derision, intentional misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and at times, pure undiluted ignorance from some demanding assurances that, they know, cannot be given. Others tend to fire back with comments that imply that there was some attempt to discourage individual family preparation when, in fact, nothing of the sort was intended or implied. This is a debate tactic is often referred to as bridging and is most often used when you exhaust logic and wish to redefine the point of debate in mid stream. The most ridiculous question I have read is.. If everything is going to be OK, then why are you developing contingency plans. The short answer is because we should! We do it well and because our customers are important to us! I commend these guys (or gals) for their tolerance and endurance.

Fortunately, the majority of posts clearly demonstrate a conscious reasonableness, a genuine need to understand and a curiosity that is rather refreshing. For decades the public in general has expressed little interest in an industry that has become so essential to daily living. I have always wondered why? Could it be that the average electric service availability in America today is around 99% or higher? Probably. As Americans dont we always seem to take the most dependable things in our experience for granted and then profess shock when it is placed at a risk that is unknown or difficult to define?

One caution here. In this thread, it was mentioned that there were customers (rural northwest, I believe) that were on life support systems and could survive only minutes if power was lost. Perhaps the writer was only trying to make a point but if accurate, this clearly illustrates the paradox we face. If lives are at risk within minutes of failure, it must be presumed that the handicap is severe enough to warrant a level of service that demands a guaranteed response and extraordinary backup systems for which no electric utility would knowingly assume liability. For a utility customer to assume any differently is exceedingly dangerous, irresponsible and negligent on their part. If this electric company does exist, I would suggest that they immediately investigate their legal and risk management offices. Fast! Today! Somebody is not doing their job of protecting the interests of their other customers and stockholders!

As a nation, weve had to endure hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, earthquakes, lightning storms and hundreds of other troublesome interruptions. But we clearly understood the reasons behind the loss of power and we knew that restoration was only a matter of time. Why? Because restoration progress was visible. You could see bucket trucks and field crews hard at work repairing distribution lines and equipment. If Y2K failures do occur, it may be quite different. There will be no streets to clear, homes to rebuild or distribution lines to replace. Just keep in mind that there is not necessarily a correlation between the number of field crews or technicians visible and the speed with which restoration can be accomplished.

My advice. Make your personal preparations based on your level of knowledge, confidence and comfort. I will.

-- Anonymous, May 22, 1999