' Roleigh Martin Interviewed on National
TV - Y2K Blackout? Keeping the Power
in America's Power Grid
06/14/1998: CBN News, which is the news channel
broadcasted on the 700 Club, ran a Y2K special, 6/9/1998.
Entitled "Y2K Blackout? Keeping the Power in America's Power
Grid", reported by David Snyder, it interviewed several industry,
government and independent experts on the problem, including
this site's webmaster, Roleigh Martin. The full text of the article is
available online.
Some excerpts:
"Many of the utilities are rising to the force," says
Congressman Morella. "Certainly, the Potomac Electric
Company indicated that they are moving ahead. But we
found that the rural co-ops are not -- they really have not
moved in a steady fashion as they should."
But those smaller utilities that aren't fixing the problem could
pose a real threat to those that do.
Even if only a few generating stations go down, sections of
the North American power grid could be at risk. Power
plants are interconnected to provide backup electricity to
one another. But if a plant, say in southeastern Indiana,
were to shut down, consumers would begin drawing power
from other stations in the region. If several plants shut down,
the remaining on-line plants would become overworked,
dramatically reducing the amount of available electricity.
Some fear the cascading effect could work across the
continent as each time zone strikes twelve, turning off the
lights in many parts of America.
"The grid was never programmed to handle an abundant
number of simultaneous failures," says Martin. "If this is a
critical design problem that's going to occur in the same
month at the same time, then you can have a lot of Davids
bringing down Goliath."
It's not unprecedented. Most of the western U.S. went dark
during a hot August day in 1996 when faulty transmission
lines in Oregon triggered plant shutdowns in nine states.
At the annual Edison Electric Institute in Chicago, power
industry executives sound confident that they're prepared
for Y2K. But they were advised in no uncertain terms that
Y2K could be a time bomb set to explode on the entire
industry.
"There isn't sufficient time or resources available to test
every process control in the field, in the electric system, or
in the gas system, for that matter," says C.D. Hobbs of the
Meta Group. "And as a consequence, utilities will have to
make hard decisions about which process controls are likely
to have the greatest impact, and then focus on those
systems."
..."The resources are short," says Hobbs. "They're not easy
to come by, and they're in demand. And secondly, there
may not be a sufficient inventory of hardware around to
replace all the hardware that needs to be replaced."
"The problem is analogous to two hikers in the woods,"
explains Martin. "They see a bear, and one says, 'I'm going
to outrun this problem.' And the other hiker says, 'You can't
outrun a bear.' And the other hiker says, 'I don't have to -- I
just have to outrun you.'"
In other words, if there's a shortage of necessary parts,
those plants which can run the fastest will get those parts
first, leaving others behind.
A video tape of the entire 90 minute show, of which the CBN
news story is near the front of the show, can be ordered from
Burrelles from either their web site,
burrelles.com, or by calling
1-800-777-8398. The video includes the whole show, from
10a-11:30a, EST, 3/23/1998 of the 700 Club broadcasted over
the Christian Broadcast Network.
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