[HARLAN] 'Here's my current view of electric utilities.'
'In order to construct any kind of reliability model for the electric power
infrastructure of USA/Canada, that could be queried to produce information
regarding the probability of "service interruptions" to any group of
customers, one would have to collect a large amount of information. Most of
the critical information needed to drive this model, such it could provide
information of useful accuracy is not yet available anywhere? Some is
collected in electric utility databases -- one Y2K remediator told me he
had a Lotus Notes database in which he was following the remediation/
repair status of 2,000 individual items.
Major elements of the overall USA/Canada system are the nuclear, fossil
fuel and hydroelectric generating plants, the transmission grids, and the
distribution systems. There are about 108 nuclear reactors, hard to count
number of fossil fuel plants about 7800 utility companies (large and small)
of different kinds, 122,000 substations and switchyards etc. One can't
really come to useful conclusions about how reliable the electric power
supply will be to an consumer group without knowing a great deal about most
of these system elements.
These 7800 utility companies are all monitored and driven by a number of
regulatory authorities of incompetent structure. I say "incompetent
structure" because it is completely uncoordinated and has many huge gaps
and overlaps.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for instance has the responsibility
for making sure that nuclear reactors are safe, before permitting them to
operate. There is _no regulatory authority charged with making sure that
they will be safe and hence capable of operating. In essence they will
perform their required function if they assume the attitude "I don't care
whether you are safe or not, but if you can't jump through hoops to
convince me you're safe, you won't run". A recent NRC letter, published
here, indicates that they all must prove Y2K remediation by June 1999 or be
subject to being shut down. Those having remaining loose ends at that time
cannot continue to operate unless they present detailed information to the
NRC indicating that they will very shortly tie up their loose ends.
There are probably 25 - 40 billion "embedded systems" of all kinds in our
global infrastructure and a few million in our electric utility
infrastructure. A fraction of these are "date sensitive". Present testing
and analysis seems to indicate that the simple microprocessor-implemented
date-sensitive components will not significantly impact reliability of
nuclear, hydroelectric or fossil fuel plants. The Y2K problem is then
"thought" to reside in a few thousand "embedded systems" and computers at
the complexity
level of PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) and above.
I understand that there were approximately 75 attendees at a May EPRI
(Electric Power Research Institute) conference in Dallas. While that is a
small number, information presented on news:comp.software.year-2000
indicates that the attendees represented about 70% of nuclear generation
capacity and 45% of fossil fuel generating capacity. It is now said that
nuclear generating stations supply about 18% of USA power, although for
Chicago it is 70% and up to 50% for areas on the Eastern Seaboard.
Utilities are doing a great deal of component testing, analysis, study and
planning before they expend generating station outage time on remediation
and testing. Most of the work is planned for normal "maintenance outages"
rather than "forced outages" driven by Y2K remediation needs. May '98 EPRI
conference attendees indicated that about 10% of their generating station
systems had been scrubbed through and about 10% of "embedded systems" were
discovered to have Y2K problems that require remediation. So, we are
beginning to get a "feel" for the nature and scope of the problem.
Even though we have thousands of problems, rather than millions, that
doesn't mean that there isn't a huge problem. Remediation of any single
"embedded system" may be quite complex. I have written a small article that
discusses some of the difficulties with remediating "embedded systems".
Embedded System Remediation: cpsr.org
To start your reading on the subject of Y2K and electric utilities I
recommend Rick Cowles and Roleigh Martin's web sites and _most
_specifically the articles they have both written for the Westergaard Site.
Rick Cowles euy2k.com
Roleigh Martin ourworld.compuserve.com
Westergaard y2ktimebomb.com
(search on electric utilities)
The Electric Utility WWW Resource List dei.gr
---
I also refer you to my May 10th article "Synergistic Mitigation and
Contingency Preparation"
See: scotsystems.com
and: ourworld.compuserve.com
___
Subject:
Re: Michael Hyatt's _The Millennium Bug_ now shipping
Date:
26 May 1998 13:02:14 EDT
From:
"Harlan Smith" <hwsmith.nowhere@cris.com>
Organization:
Paperless
Newsgroups:
comp.software.year-2000
References:
1
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