July 13, 1998
Could be some reason for concern on utilities'
Y2K readiness
BY AKWELI PARKER, The Virginian-Pilot
Copyright 1998, Landmark Communications Inc.
As far-reaching as the effects of the Year 2000
computer problem promise to be, perhaps none is as
chilling as its potential to affect the electric power grid.
''I would hope that the major industries are OK, like
the phone system and the power system,'' said Godfrey
Grier, of Virginia Beach-based Metro Information
Systems. ''Because without power, things come to a
halt pretty quick.''
It could be a screeching halt, according to testimony at a recent Senate Special
Committee hearing on the Year 2000 problem.
Although individual electric utilities have been addressing the problem as early as
1995, no industrywide assessment has been made and no state-of-readiness
measure is available, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, an
industry think tank.
A non-scientific Senate staff survey of the 10 largest U.S. electric, oil and natural
gas utilities uncovered some disturbing facts:
Only 20 percent of the firms had fully assessed their automated systems. One
firm did not know how many lines of computer code it had.
None of the companies had been assured that its vendors and service
providers would meet the inflexible deadline of Jan. 1, 2000.
None of the firms had finished back-up plans for Year 2000-related failures,
even though they're required by regulators to keep emergency-response plans.
For utilities, there are two species of the Year 2000 bug: software-related
programming bugs and ''embedded'' bugs. The latter are particularly nettlesome
because they reside in the chips that contain computers' hardwired operating
instructions.
Embedded systems, which run many of the ''mission critical'' components of
power plants, are such a big worry for utilities that the Electric Power Research
Institute set up an information-sharing program devoted to that concern.
Embedded systems are found in load dispatch computers, nuclear power plant
safety systems and fossil plant boiler control systems, to name a few places.
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