Will power go out? Not if PUD can help it
By MARC MARTINEZ, World business writer
WENATCHEE -- Will the power in Chelan County go out at midnight on Jan. 1, 2000? That's the question the Chelan County PUD expects to spend $500,000 answering. The PUD has assembled a seven-member team to work on Y2K compliance. The utility district also hired TAVA Technologies, a Philadelphia, Pa.-based consulting firm, to inventory computer systems used to monitor and control operations at its three dam sites.
The consultants spent almost four days in late July going through each operating system at the dams to determine which ones won't operate beyond Dec. 31, 1999. The PUD will take the finished report and use its own staff of engineers and other personnel to make the necessary changes to the operating systems.
The assessment, conducted by the same team that performed Y2K compliance work for Boeing, cost the PUD $264,000.
Our goal is uninterrupted service for our customers," said Gordon Graham, the management information systems director for the PUD.
He said the half million dollars the PUD will spend to make sure its systems operate beyond the year 2000 compares favorably to the $1.4 million bid submitted by another company to do both the assessment and necessary repair work.
"Based on the quotes from other vendors, I consider $500,000 to be a bargain," he said. "There will be utilities that will spend a lot more to get to that point. This is largely unchartered waters. There hasn't been a lot of this work done in the utility industry."
Graham anticipates some of the operating systems will have to be replaced and others upgraded to ensure the embedded systems that control power production and the water gates at the PUD's dams survive the millennium bug.
wenworld.com
about chelan county pud:
chelanpud.org
its three hydro projects:
chelanpud.org
chelanpud.org
chelanpud.org
steve |
