A neighbor is the manager of a coal-burning electric company owned and operated by the local university, and for the sole use by the university (55,000+ faculty and students). He attended a meeting in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the B______ Corporation, makers of control systems for power generation companies. The meeting was held over several days around Halloween, and "Joe" feels that although this was a privately-sponsored meeting, there seem to have been some overtones of involvement by the federal government.

These are the facts as Joe took them from the meeting:

1. TPTB will decide on November 20 whether to leave the nukes up and running, or to shut them down. If they are shut down, the national grid would lose 18-20% of power.

2. They (the sponsors) are anticipating a failure rate of approximately 7% in embedded processors/systems.

3.According to their worst-case scenario, they anticipate significant problems with backfeed/inversions, with "dirty power" and rationing for up to six months.

4. In general, coal plants aren't going to have too many problems.

I don't know if anyone out there in forum-land can verify/deny this. This isn't a friend-of-a-friend story, so it seems like it could be quite reliable. (If it isn't, flame away, as my feelings won't be hurt! ;) )

From another reliable source, the University of Michigan has already decided to disconnect themselves from the grid and rely on generators on January 1, because of the risks to patients in their medical center.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 1999

Answers

Ann, What's the mc in your address stand for?

Just curious.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 1999

Irish name!

-- Anonymous, November 10, 1999

Ann, I visited the University of Michigan website, and could find no confirming information that they will disconnect from the grid and rely on generators. In fact, I found evidence that indicates otherwise in this document (updated October 19, 1999):

http://www.plant.bf.umich.edu/plantops/year2000/PDF/Utilities/Critical LoadPlanning-CPP.PDF

CRITICAL LOADS PLANNING FOR BUILDINGS SERVED BY THE CENTRAL POWER PLANT

The Utilities & Maintenance Services (UMS) department has been making careful plans concerning all of the possible contingencies that could result from Y2K related disturbances in University facilities equipment, utilities and operations for which we are responsible. An earlier report to the University community titled A Report On Utility System Failure Analyses At The University Of Michigan April, 1999, detailed the effects which various utility system failures would have on University facilities and the mitigation measures that should be taken to minimize loss and damage. As described in that report, the Universitys Central Campus is in the fortunate position of being able to maintain a certain amount of electricity service even if the local utility grid were unable to supply electricity for some period of time. This is possible because the Universitys Central Power Plant (CPP) contains steam turbine generators that can operate independently of the local electric grid. The amount of electricity which can be produced in the Central Power Plant is dependant upon weather conditions and the output is generally less than the total Central Campus demand. In addition, during an area- wide electricity outage, the Central Power Plant would be called upon to also provide supplemental power to the UM Hospitals. By chance, normal weather conditions and normal electric loads during a New Years night provide the CPP with enough steam load to generate enough electricity to cover all electric loads for all of its normal customers. With additional capacity from the use of the balance condensers, the UM Hospitals could also receive additional power. In other words, UMS does not expect to be required to impose a load shedding plan at all even if Detroit Edison was to fail. To prepare for times when the power required is greater than the CPP can supply, however, UMS has established a contingency program for curtailing the electricity demand on the Central Campus in the event of an area-wide electricity outage. The following paragraphs explain how that program was defined. --------

The above information, especially the quotes in bold, certainly indicate that their were no plans to intentionally separate from the grid as of October, 19, 1999.

Do you have a link to later confirming information? Is it possible that your source is in error?

Regarding the other information you have provided, I do not find it credible either. Im not sure what "TPTB" stands for, but I can assure you that no one is planning on shutting down the nukes. FYI, in the NC/SC area served by Duke Power, nuclear supplies about 40-50% of the electricity produced, if I remember correctly. All 103 nuclear plants have been now declared Y2k ready (as of somewhere between October 26 and November 1).

Regards,

-- Anonymous, November 10, 1999

FactFinder, I'll check into this some more and get back to you.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

From a conversation with an assistant chief engineer at UofM this morning:

The University's power plant provides approximately 2/3 of the power used by the university, and all of the power for the hospital. The remaining one-third is provided by Detroit Edison. UofM started their remediation in February. In the event that there is any fluctuation by Detroit Edison, they are going to immediately switch to their generators. They will be neither buying nor selling electricity on 12/31--1/1. (My comment: Note that Detroit Edison announced in a letter to their customers last January that they had just finished their assessment in December.) The generators at U of M are natural gas/fuel oil.

The 18-20% referred to is the amount of electricity provided by the nukes across the board in the U.S. (verified by another engineer at a power plant this a.m.)

The date for the decision re: nukes has likewise been verified as an approximate date by the second engineer .

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Thanks for the additonal information, Ann. It does indeed look like you have found a very good source at UM. I wonder if their might have been some confusion with your earlier source based on mistaking having a contingency plan for disconnecting from the grid (which they apparently do have,in case of grid problems, based on the document I cited and the source you cite in your second post) with planning to disconnect from the grid, which it is not (unless of course their are grid problems). The contingency plan document looks quite thorough, by the way.

Regarding the 18-20% of electricity supplied nationwide by nuclear power, I didn't mean to imply that I disagreed with this, in fact, 20% is the figure I have often seen and appears to be correct (I haven't calculated it myself!). My reference to 40-50% of electricity supplied by Duke Power was only to indicate that for some areas of the country, shutting down all the nuclear plants could cause SIGNFICANT problems such as power outages, depending on demands for the period.

Now as for the other information supplied by the "B" corporation, may I ask what the nature of this meeting in Washington DC was? Can you identify the corporation, so I can determine their significance to the electric power industry? If this is an accurate transcription (from the spokesperson to your friend to you), the statements made just do not seem compatible with all the other findings in the industry. One at a time:

"1. TPTB will decide on November 20 whether to leave the nukes up and running, or to shut them down. If they are shut down, the national grid would lose 18-20% of power."

Who/what does TPTB stand for? Perhaps I should know this, but I dont! :) I am totally confused as to what this is supposed to mean. If we're talking commercial nuclear power plants here, I just posted a new thread in this forum with the latest release from the NRC confirming that ALL 103 nuclear power plants are Y2K Ready.

2. They (the sponsors) are anticipating a failure rate of approximately 7% in embedded processors/systems. Well, anybody is free to throw out a number, and many have ;) The utility industries number is 5% of embedded systems requiring remediation due to y2k bugs, this is NOT the same as a "hard failure" and does not mean that this number would have failed - most were minor y2k bugs. In my research, only a fraction of 1% of embedded system failures are "hard failures" that prevent the device from performing its intended function. So theres my number :)

"3.According to their worst-case scenario, they anticipate significant problems with backfeed/inversions, with "dirty power" and rationing for up to six months." Huh? Backfeed/inversions is terminology I am not familiar with, perhaps this is industrial or T&D lingo? I know of low voltage, transients, power line sags, dips, spikes, etc, but not backfeed/inversion. Perhaps a T&D type could help translate. "Dirty power" I have heard, but isn't this spikes and noise on the 60hz frequency? I know of no basis for a scenario where Y2k causes prolonged "dirty power". Also, is this person talking about powerrationing for up to six months? This one is way out of the ball park, there's no basis in any of the government or industry reports to conclude such a thing.

"4. In general, coal plants aren't going to have too many problems. "

This one doesn't make sense to me. Comparing nukes to coal plants, some coal plants are far more likely to be newer or have upgraded Distributed Control Systems (DCS) - these plants would have more embedded systems overall. I have never heard anyone in the industry make such a statement.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Italics off please.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Whew, one more correction. Regarding "coal plants aren't going to have too many problems", I agree. Nor are nuclear plants, nor are hydro plants, nor are combustion turbines, etc. But since the other items listed indicated that the speaker though there would be problems with power, the implication is that there would be problems with plants OTHER than coal plants - this is what I disagreed with.

Regards

-- Anonymous, November 11, 1999

Fact Finder, Thanks for your patience in awaiting answers. "TPTB" means "the powers that be", i.e. those in charge. As for the other stuff, I wish I could tell you more, but I'm just reporting what was told to me by an eu guy, and I don't understand all of the techie lingo here. ;) He actually feels pretty good now about our local university plant, but has some reservations about other midwest/ eastern seaboard plants, and I really didn't get much of a chance to pick his brain. (Part of the problem is 8 people in my family all sick at once, so my ability to trace this stuff just went to pieces!)(Got Kleenex?!)

About the 7% failure rate for embeddeds: That seems high to me too, but I don't know the original source. Does anyone else on the forum have any link to this? 7% is an outrageous number to me, and I hope like anything that it's way off!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1999