Most everyone agrees that losing electricity would be the worst result of y2k. Besides the possibility of failure due to y2k problems and possible fuel delivery problems and terrorist sabotage, etal. Can anyone come forward with a plausible scenario that affects our power supply (y2k related) that has not been discussed? I ask this because I have felt all along that something this large in scope and complexity will produce events from 'left field' that are out of the arena of the 'experts' area of expertise. I would be interested to hear anyones 'off the wall' thoughts on this.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

Answers

How's about the recent "prepaid electric meter" thing in London? Who'da thunk it?

Ooooh, I like these kind of brainstorming type questions...everyone come up with your most off the wall and improbable cause/effect/scenario.

Here's one to get you started:

A tanker loses navigation due to a Y2k glitch in its satellite navigation system in the channel of a deep water tributary near an east coast port. The tanker rams a high voltage transmission tower which crosses the tributary, and knocks it down, taking out the transmission line. A power plant feeding the transmission tower trips offline. The power plant is cross connected at the switchyard level to two sister plants, and they trip. This causes a voltage disturbance in the regional grid that starts a cascade. Whole region goes down.

Ok, your turn. ;-)

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

We have a three day Nor'easter starting on December 31, It starts as snow about three feet of it. Then warm ocean air rises over the storm and turns the precipitation to freezing rain which brings down power lines from Washington DC to Portland Maine. The storm moves out to sea and brings in a crisp Northwesterly breeze with temperatures hovering near zero degrees F. A few substations blackout during a y2k anomaly. There you have it, a three day storm followed by a month of repair work. God only knows when I will get power restored.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

It's September 9th, 1999. Every state government in the nation has been effected by some kind of 9999 effect. The Governors get religion and demand that the federal government organize the nation for what may or may not happen.

Clinton denies that there's a problem, and this time, he's really impeached. The House, Senate and State Legislatures together demand the creation of a national Y2k Awareness and Contingency Force taking in all parts of society from schoolchildren through retirees and businesses of all size and shape.

The country is motivated because, finally, the truth is being spoken. Everything changes: work and preparation, open meetings about local planning and care of people with special needs; unexpected energy contingencies and alternatives are presented and tried.

Mostly, though, there is a feeling of calm and a willingness to work together, because everyone understands now that we're all in this together. The proof of the changed attitude is that the Wall Street Journal reports that the first section of society to feel the full impact of Y2k are those in the law profession, who are having a tough time trying to drum up business.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 1999

You don't want to hear mine. It's not fun like those above.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

The major power companies in the area have new GPS receivers that function well on Aug 22. The small producers have the older versions, couldn't afford the replacement cost. No problem, they just switch back to manual synchronization. As the smaller companies slowly drift off freq. the local grids become overloaded and trip. Not sure how everything works in this area, but I will be on the farm that week-end. Good luck to everyone,

Bill

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

A short-circuit in a substation causes a day-long blackout of NYC, one of the media centers of the world, on January 1. Even brainless, spineless media types won't believe it's not Y2K, and world-wide panic ensues.

Of course, this is completely unrealistic. As everybody knows, a short-circuit in a substation could never cause a city-wide blackout.

"San Francisco Power Outage Revealed as Hoax"

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

As soon as the problems really start showing up in mid-December, Clinton orders "Go" to his own special contingency plans for families. Everyone gets a backpack, 3 cans of Slim-fast powder, 10 pounds of (government surplus) dried milk, and a handy water filter with its own colorful straw! Heads of families get the handy shaker canister to mix it all up.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Hmmm...this thread is moving in a bit of a different direction than I had envisioned. I was thinking more along the line of some off-the- wall stuff you can think of that could affect electrical supply.

Normal forum posting rules have not been suspended for this thread. ;-)

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

In my neighborhood, kamikaze squirrels are often to blame. Don't know if that falls under the heading of "terrorist sabotage", but it has helped to control the local population. ;o)

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Off the wall huh?

After the initial spate of system crashes, (electric utility and others), due to oversight and neglegence, which causes the nation/world to catch its breath and monitor the situation closely, hoping for a rapid recovery, a new rash of failures in embedded systems begins occurring.

These systems show no outward need for date/time functions. On close inspection it's found the "Beach Bug" lives! Yikes!

Due to variations in timing inputs, i.e. crystals et.al. to signal the lapse of time, and due to various inaccuracies these "Beach Bug" failures continue randomly for many months. "When will it end?" Dan Rather ponders to the world repeatedly. Huge portions of the country don't hear him though since they don't have the juice for the telly.

Systems in every sector of our computer dependent society experience random failures. We get very distrustful of these machines. The frustration mounts, the bump in the road becomes more like a washed out dirt road on a mountain side.

Electricity goes off, then on, then off again everywhere. The time it takes to come back on varies considerably. Hours, days, weeks. Replacement parts become scarce. Systems get stripped to bare essentials.

The sale of uniterruptible power supplies skyrockets. Back-up generators become a necessity for almost every business. Data losses because of the power surges and outages becomes a nightmare.

The smug get knocked to their knees.

The mantra for the new century is to become independent of the grid. Be able to stand alone! Parochial interests rule the day. Besides, national leadership totally sucks. All they can do is bring in some troops to small sections of the bigger cities and everyone else is on their own anyway.

Oil/gas prices soar. Big SUV's lose popularity and gas misers reign supreme. Conservation/reduction is recognized as the most effective solution. Prior to installing generators, inventories are taken and power use reduction measures are implemented. Incandescent lights are thrown out. Fourescent fixtures take over.

Insullation sales flourish, low-e coatings and films are installed on existing windows. Solar water heating resurges in popularity and is recognized once again as a rational alternative. Retrofit is the name of the game. Then the summer comes and air conditioning systems get upgraded to use less juice.

Basically everyone gets pissed about our dependencies and does what they can to reduce them as much as possible.

Whole industries are reshaped overnight. Conservation measures reduce our energy consumptions by nearly forty percent.

IT professionals in California have been conscripted by the State to fix the problems but the problems keep coming. One after another. These guys don't know squat about embedded systems.

The most horrific aspect of the situation has been the failure of the electricity. Congressional investigations move slowly. People don't wait for that nonsense and look into alternative sources.

State govenments are beckoned to lead their communities in more sane ways. Forget the Feds! Billy's probably getting a B.J. and can't be bothered anyway.

Local governments and populations take an even more parochial stance. "The people of THIS town use half as much energy as we did before the bump."

What we use and where it comes from is examined closely. Busi

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

That last line was; Business as usual ain't.

Steve

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Factfinder and Dan the Powerman turn out to be terrorists who were trying to calm down the masses while they slowly took control of the powerplants to control the power of North America. Jan 1st drops by and they cut the power off so that everyone must bow down to the new world leader, Gary North. Heil Gary!!

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

The power company goes broke. Everyone is going to have cash flow problems. The power company has to be able to measure and sell the power it produces or distributes. Even if it can measure it, it has to get an accurate bill out.

The customer of the power company may get an accurate bill, and may want to pay the bill but can't because their accounts payable system is hooped. Other customers - facing their own cash flow problems - will be delighted to blame a computer problem for the failure to pay promptly. They'd rather stiff Hydro than their employees.

Revenues will also crash because some massive consumers - an aluminum smelter here, a pulp mill there, a chemical plant there - stop buying power. The winter is the low consumption months anyway, and most costs are fixed.

The power company has a lot of bills to pay. Banks will have their own cash flow problems and won't want to - or can't - extend the normal operating lines of credit.

How does a utility operate without cash flow? I think most employees will work, even without a paycheque, but payroll is not the only fixed obligation a utility has. Without cash flow they start defaulting on loans.

How long can power companies produce power if they are broke? How quickly can a government - at some level - step in? What mechanism exists that can bail them out?

Tom

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Tom, that's an all-too-plausible scenario. If not in the USA, Canada & Mexico (to mollify some pseudonymous posters), then why not in other countries? Except, of course, New Zealand and South Africa. :-)

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

We shouldn't worry about Y2K anymore because Nostradamus' comet is supposed to hit us on Sept. 4 of this year. It will be apparent to us with this Eclipse in Europe (we couldn't see it before because it was hidden in view of the sun). So get your bomb shelters ready!! :-)

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Recently a friend of mine who is a Senior Systems Administrator at a VERY LARGE computer company said that she had a client who called Microsoft to ask about Y2K and their NT server. Micro's support tech told the client that he should shut down the server at 11:00 p.m. on Dec. 31st and bring it back up at 1:00 a.m. January 1st. She couldn't beleive that Microsoft would do that - so she called support and was told the same thing. So here's my scenario:

Hundreds of thousands of NT servers are rebooted in each region at 1:00 a.m., which causes a huge pull on the grid, causing each region to black out. Hundreds of thousands of support people pick up the phone to find out what's going on and they cause the phone system to overload and crash.

Panic insues - people rioting, dogs and cats living together, Homer Simpson out of work because his Nuclear Plant went down - AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Terri Reid

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

>Homer Simpson out of work because his Nuclear Plant went down

Poppycock

C. Montgomery Burns

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

at precisely 11:03 am edt on the 11th of august 1999 while the moon completely covered the solar disk as seen from a shadow path on the earth's surface... y2k awareness spooks working for the resistance walked directly past the guards at the nrc carrying large 5 gallon spring water bottles.

they delivered these bottles to each floor and while there, removed the open bottles from their canisters and replaced them with the one's they carried in.

as these canisters provided not only fresh drinking water but also the water for the coffee carafes it was not long before the top brass called for an unusually extemporaneous meeting with all members at the highest levels.

after much soul searching, gnashing of teeth, and renting of clothes the general consensus of opinion was to break the 'code of silence' and 'go public' with the true status of the nuclear facility plants.

the senate called an emergency meeting and the white house was informed. upon hearing the sorry state of affairs within the nuclear power industry the president addressed the nation.

it was announced that the top investigators from the nrc had named the plants that were at great risk of failure and these plants were being weaned off the grid in the following month.

an engineering task force was formed to determine the remaining generating capacity per region and the most practical and economical means for the transmission and distribution of the power generated by the remaining nuclear and fossil plants.

that same day the national inquirer ran a piece that placed the long deceased timothy leary at the nrc, the senate, and the white house.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

All excellent!!! Now I'll try my hand...December 31,1999. There is a feeling of great expectation across the USA. It's something like the feeling you get standing in line for a really scary movie, or watching a huge storm as it comes closer...and...closer. As fate and luck would have it, the worst ice storm in a century is moving across the eastern one half of the Nation.By 10:00 Est thousands of miles of electrical lines are rapidly collecting unrelenting layers of ice. The streets and highways are rapidly becoming impassable.Millions of people are attending millenium parties and are unaware of the fact that they will soon be unable to walk outside, much less drive. At precisely 11:30, the first of thousands of lines snap. In quick succession, tree limbs, ( millions of them ) in villages and cities across the country, come crashing down. Lines that haven't already collapsed from the ice are ripped down by the tree limbs.Mother nature laughs at the y2k prognosticators as she unleashes her terrible power,causing with pure weight the very thing that was feared to be caused by the 'bug'. By midnight there was NO power being supplied to the entire eastern half of America. Not only that, but it soon became apparent that no repair crews would be venturing out into the incredible Dr.Zhivago landscape. Doors to vehicles were welded shut under one inch of ice, EVERY tree had collapsed onto houses and roadways. And still the deadly mist came down.It was never known exactly what y2k had to do with it when the rest of the Nations grid(s) went down. There was simply too much carnage.Unfortunatly, emergency radio communications were almost completely cut off because of a huge solar storm and an earlier problem with GPS rollover.( to be continued? )

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

A couple of weeks ago a Houston area major power co. ran some y2k test. They even called major uers in the area a couple of hours in advance to warn them. The story goes they ran into problems and had to call on Louisana Entergy to "borrow" backup. Entergy refused. Islanding ALREADY???

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

Power companies in the east and then all across the country were surprised by a sudden drop in demand as customers large and small unpluged from the grid to avoid power surges. Power companies in turn reduced output and then were taken by surprise as people decided to "check it out" by plugging back in causing a surge in demand that caused a few spot outages. Telephones in some areas are out and that makes it harder for the power companies to regulate the juice. Mostly they can handle it, but it takes longer than usual and a few companies never got the widgits they were waiting for to upgrade their system or provide the manual workarounds. They trip offline shutting down offsite power to a couple northeastern nuclear plants. The nuclear plants really really thought they would be ready by Dec. 15th or 16, and they came really really close too. If that shipping line hadn't tested their new system (which failed) those parts probably would've arrived in time. But, no matter, the nuclear plants were able to effect a safe shutdown and fire up the generators that would keep the core from melting down. Only now.. with 2 nuclear plants and a couple regular plants shut down there was increasing grid instability. Lights surged and dimmed. Surged and dimmed. Then the power went out. Somehow the power surges caused fires in several places throughout the surrounding cities. 911 didn't respond.. besides the problems at the phone company, the 911 system was just plain not ready. One of the fires was at a refinery. Boy, was that a great explosion. About a 1/3 of the firetrucks responding to the fires found their pumps or ladders didn't work because of some embedded system their vendor had told them was compliant. It hardly mattered because in anticipation of "glitches" everyone in the area had filled bathtubs and jugs and kiddie pools with water and - considering the drought - the city reservoirs were just about empty.

With the power out and fires and sirens piercing the darkness, many workers, of all types, who had been ORDERED to give up holidays and vacations to remain on duty over rollover, suddenly decided there was just not enough money to keep them from being with their family. Power company workers, telephone company workers, programmers, grocery store clerks, and even a fair percentage of those whose job it is to "protect and to serve" all dropped what they were doing and headed home.

Of course they ran smack into the crowds headed home from the - now darkened and cancelled - New Year's Eve celebrations.. and smack into the craziness of looters, and into a massive traffic jam made into a permanent parking lot by the small percentage of cars and trucks with just the right embedded systems to shut them down on rollover.

Thus everything came to a standstill.. including the deisel trucks bringing more fuel to the generators of the nuclear plants. They would have arrived earlier, but EVERYONE was suddenly buying generators and fuel at the end of the year, and sometimes you just have to wait.

Thus the meltdown started. Workers at the plant TRIED to notify the authorities. What DID happen to that NRC guy who was supposed to be sitting there making decisions about which regulations could be bypassed. No one had seen him for about a half hour. And with the phones and satellite communications being down, well... didn't look good. Who you gonna call?

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1999

How about "MCI glitch disables power plant communications systems. Problems related to systems upgrade, company says."

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1999

Yike! A cross-universe wormhole has opened up between the TimeBomb2000 forum and the EU-Y2K forum!

Quick! Plug it up with duct tape, before the TimeBomb2000 antimatter leaks through and blows this forum to bits!

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1999

Believe it or not, Scott, I think there's value in doing this whacko kind of brainstorming (if it's in a controlled environment). What I was looking to get out of this exercise (I don't know about the initiator, Kelly) was some failure mechanisms that may not have been thought about before. I've seen that exact type of thing happen before when folks are given the task, in a group setting, to think of outrageous scenarios that might either improve a process or identify hidden weaknesses in a process.

Maybe it'll work out; maybe it won't and I'll delete the thread in a day or two if it ends up as no more than outrageous scenarios with no real value added to the overall discussion. Consider it an experiment in "cyber think".

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1999

Alright here's a way out one on a topic that's been discussed but as I never got around to asking this question here goes. If it betrays my ignorance, well excuuuuse me. 10 days from now a GPS receiver embedded in a forgotten section of the TVA fails the EOW. Instead, of shutting down, however, it merrily continues along generating garbage data (this is a described failure mode for non EOW compliant GPS receivers) the data is reviewed weekly and the failure unnoticed. The device is cleverly programmed to receive grid input and automatically correct small shifts in grid synchronization every six hours. That morning that device with its erroneous data finds itself to be, as it believes, terribly out of synch with the local grid and attempts neccessary adjustments automatically. The generating unit trips and it is 22 hours before it is back online. Initial attempts at start up lead to the same synchronization problem and it is some hours before the non-compliant chip is disabled.

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1999

Actually Rick,I approached this quite seriously. The off beat scenarios are a fresh way to look at an old topic. And sometimes a real gem can come from these types of brain teasers. As to it's appropriatness to this thread.Maybe so maybe not.It's been well received by all but one, and I think fun as well.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

..... Believe it or not, Scott, I think there's value in doing this whacko kind of brainstorming (if it's in a controlled environment)....

Truth be told, Rick, I agree completely with this notion. But this particular thread presented an irresistable opportunity for expressing my opinion that the forum should not go the way of TimeBomb2000. As long as you are in control of it, I know that won't happen.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

OK, you asked for events that "are out of the arena", I have personally seen outages caused by events that are so improbable as to considered impossible. Try these for example.

1. A circus arrives in town, and in the process of erecting the big top one of the circus poles contacts a main transmission circuit. Quite apart from the rather adverse effect that this has on the circus equipment, it just so happens that at that time a parrallel circuit was out of service for maintenance. Supply was lost to almost a quarter of the country.

2. During a wind storm, a chicken rum was picked up and blown into a substation. The wire netting wrapped itself around a 110KV bus and dropped power off a large city.

3. At a rather small generating station an air compressor drier allowed a very small amount of moisture into a 220KV air blast breaker. During an opening operation the breaker suffered a restrike and exploded. The flying porcelin from the breaker's bushing cut a wire which was connected to the Bus Check Zone relay and effectively disabled the bus zone protection and the CB fail protection. As a result the ensuing bus earth fault was clearedfrom the remote ends of the connecting circuits, and disabled three other power stations. The grid frequency fell rapidly and two more stations tripped off due to under frequency. CASCADE fault. Half of the country went black.

Improbable situations? Yes, but its the probable ones that don't cause any problems.

Malcolm.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

Yes, but its the probable ones that don't cause any problems.

A good rule-of-thumb when drawing up contigency plans?

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

Rick, Thanks for letting us go on for awhile with this. Sometimes the kids need to go out and play. :)

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

(Here's Jon, with his usually nasty stuff...)

How about this:

On Dec 31, at about 11:45 pm, a group of highly trained and financed terrorists strike at key substations and generation plants supplying New York City with power. Using shape charges of plastique explosive, they black out the city. They also have strike teams that take out a few central telephone switching stations.

They also blow up, using ANFO bombs in large moving vans, each bridge leading into Manhattan, and bring down each tunnel. They infiltrate JKF and Laguardia (sp?) airports, and blow up the control towers.

They also infect the water supply system with anthrax.

I imagine all that would cause a few problems... Unfortunately, I also assume that there are probably terrorist groups out there actually planning stuff like this. Fortunately for us, most terrorists are pretty stupid :-)

Jon

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

This is my thriller:

31 December 1999 23:00 A lot of big consumers like chemical plants, hospitals etc. shut down or switch to their own emergency power supply. People are starting their own generators. The IPP's continue to deliver 100% of their capacity. There is unbalance between generation and load of electricity. The frequency and voltage is getting higher and higher but everything remains just under control.

31 December 1999 23:59 The balance between generation and load is back.

1 Januar 2000 00:30 The big consumers starting up. This proces cost more energy than normal. Other big consumers switch back to the normal grid. The balance slips away again. Frequency and Voltage are running down. The safety systems are getting active. The whole grid is shut off. The power generators safety systems are shutting the systems down. The whole grid is in the dark.

1 Januar 2000 08:00 Some regions are starting up again.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999