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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Swift who wrote (3041)	12/26/1998 10:30:00 AM
From: jwk	Respond to of 9818

Tom -- The system is designed to handle regional storm caused outages such as were seeing from the current eastern icestorm. The system grewup with storm damage, so it has created excellent techniques for dealing with ice & wind damage. Y2K factors have the potential to introduce random glitches which could easily fall outside of the standard protocols for bringing outed areas back online. Again, it is the relativley narrow time frame in which glitches may occur, the relatively large and random area over which they may be spread, the "system depth" potential of failures (ice coated, downed power lines are at the top level -- highly visible, but readlily apparent as to the source of the problem, an irksome embedded chip which is hidden deep in a control/monitoring station is much less obvious), and potential difficulties created by a supporting infastructure which may be dealing with its own situations and thereby less able to provide the full level of support required to quickly and efficiently rectify the situation. Given these potential factors, it seems a bit simplistic to mantain a position that there is nothing for a reasonable and prudent person to do or prepare for simply because power generation is uncomplicated and power goes out all the time anyway. My local rural power co-operative produces no power. They buy it from all over the country; constantly looking for the best rate and constantly switiching between sources. In reading many articles on the grid, I have often seen comments from various areas where the utility is question says something to the effect that they expect everything to be ok with the grid and that they will certainly be fine......and if problems do develop with the grid, they will simply isolate themselves and their customers from it by switching off from the grid and taking care of their own. The system is not desinged to have local utilities behave in such a manner. When we have recent events such as SF and the Fort Collins incident providing examples of how long it can take to get power backup under the best of circumstances, what might be the case when it is not the best of circumstances AND everyone is not fully co-operating along traditional protocals? I very much hope that the power grid weathers the challenge and that no one goes without power for any lenght of time. But, given the current potenital for y2k glitches in the system -- let alone traditional weather induced failures -- why would a reasonable and prudent person scoff at basic preparations for power challenges in the dead of winter? And, we haven't even discussed the potential for deliberate acts of sabotage by foreign or homegrown groups with their own gripes and agendas who may see 1/1/00 as a chance for maximizing the effects their actions.