'Some believe that there is a power station problem
asked in the TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Q&A Forum
This is another article out of my book 'The Year 2000
Millennium Bug Report' this guy believes that power stations
are indeed at risk. Timothy Wilbur
Source: Year 2000 Discussion List, John Catterall, Year
2000 Project Manager - Western Power, in response to a
Los Angeles Times article from 3/11/1997
From; jcatterall@ccmail.wpcorp.com.au Automated systems
are indeed widespread throughout power utilities. Exposure
to the industry would in my opinion rate as extreme. At
Western Power, our IT compliance project (cost around $3
million and employing 35 full time employees) is trivial in
comparison to the issues we face on the control and
embedded system front.
Just leaving aside the problems associated with ensuring
supply of such items as fuel, from the weighbridge and
conveyor systems through to intelligent metering and meter
reading systems dates are endemic.
Many of the control systems represented in power systems
have dates associated with them. These could be reclosers,
Voltage regulators, Governors, PLCs etc. The list is endless.
You then have a swathe of actual 'applications' involved in
the delivery of electricity such as your Distributed Control
System and your SCADA (System Control and DATA 'eg
dates' Acquisition) systems, all of which have dates
associated with them. Much of what happens throughout the
process of generating and delivering electricity is 'DATE
AND TIME STAMPED'.
A typical DCS at a power station will have many thousands
of processors associated with it. Anyone prepared to give
me a guarantee that my DCS won't experience a date
problem?? (I can't even get the manufacturer to give me
this). Anyone prepared to run a power station, when the
DCS is throwing alarms up at you that indicates it's getting
no readings or a peculiar reading either from a device it is
monitoring or one of its front end processors??
However, this represents just a portion of your problems.
You will also need to address your security systems, your
alarm systems (fire, temperature, etc,) your wastewater, your
emissions etc. How do you monitor these and what control
systems do you have in place? After all, your management
must know how much and over what time period things are
occurring. Your employee protection systems - would your
power station staff be happy running your power station for
you when they know if they hit a panic button nothing is
likely to happen.
Any suggestion that power systems don't use dates or could
not be affected by the Year 2000 problem is at best ill
informed. John Catterall, Western Power - Year 2000
Project Manager (Note: these represent my views only and
do not necessarily represent the views of my company)
Asked by Timothy J Wilbur (timkaz@nor.com.au) on July 24, 1998.
Contribute an answer to "Some believe that there is a power station
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