'....You know, I've been interested in this Y2K crap for a while now, as a kind of fantasy "Doomsday" scenario. Planet of the apes, Conan the Barbarian, make a new go of it, all the good stuff. Being the instigator that I am, I liked to throw it out there it and see what kind of reaction I would get. Good study of people.
The wife and I were preparing for a disruption in services, like the ice storm we had here last year. Folks around here didn't have power for a month. No water. The local comminutes ran shelters, fuel and food rationing happened, restricted travel, National Guard, that kind of thing.
What goes around comes around.
At work I got tasked from on high with fixing the "Y2K Problem". No sweat. The only thing that I figured would be goofy would be some software, mostly in accounting, other-people interfaced stuff, and the older desktop computers. They needed to be replaced anyway. We and the World could muddle through.
The major portion of the plants controls, (remember? I work at a fairly new power plant) although computer operated, were a different breed of machine, and care nothing about the date, they merely control their specific machine and send info to the plants main control computer, which operates valves and various other support devices for the main processes. No big deal. Investigation into the plant's main control computers also showed that it was no big deal, the only thing that (reportedly) would go wrong was some trending functions, which allow us to "look in the past" ( I am the master of the run- on sentence... On a dark and stormy night...)
Checking some 40-odd control systems and over 400 circuit cards nothing showed. So far, so good. No indication of Y2K failures. Oh, I've got 2 systems, besides the trending thing, to software de-bug, but they only look to see if a pump has been running for a week straight, if so, the program shifts to the standby pump. Once again, no big deal.
I am now down to the "stuff you never think about " level. Embedded chips. Supposedly the real crux of the matter.
It seems to me that if the embedded chip doesn't have a people-to-machine interface, a readout of some sort, or operate on a calendar of some kind, such as : I haven't been serviced in 6 months so I will shut down function, then how could it know or even care, what today's date is ?
Silly boy.
I ran into a doosey of an "embedded chip". Three of them as a matter of fact. The only three I have looked at so far. This does not bode well...
Doosey #1: The plants phone system will not work. The manufacture of the chip says so. The rest of the system will, but if the brains of the systems don't, what part will ? The manufacturer doesn't support this system anymore even though it was built in 1992.
Doosey #2: The meter which reads the total power output of the plant will not work. Who would check a simple meter? Here is the good part: This meter masquerades as a simple output meter, but in reality it sends a signal to the supplementary firing system which controls the Steam Turbine portion of the plant. 36 million watts worth. For $95.00 we can get the meter upgraded to Y2K-OK status. Consider it done.
Doosey #3: The best one. The gas turbine's (the main source of power & heat for this plant and most power plants built in the last 15 years...) fire suppression system central processing unit will not work. The card manufacturer says "We never built anything like that", but I'm looking at the card...and they are sending me a test program for the "card we never built". I went to the manufacturer of the CPU's web site and by gosh, it ain't going to work. Once again, if the brains of the system are not going to work, what part will ? That's not the best part. If the fire suppression system is down, the Gas Turbine will not start. If the Gas Turbine is running on Y2K date roll- over, the Gas Turbine will shut down. Violently. If the Gas Turbine is not running, the rest of the plant will not be running. NO POWER to the grid. We could send a false signal to the Gas Turbine to indicate that the fire suppression system is OK, but what would our insurance carrier have to say about that ?
It appears that I will have to have a whole new fire suppression system installed, and that will take at least 6 months to do. On top of the pain in the ass factor of specifying the thing, I'll have to convince the Boss to spend the bucks to do it (at least $ 20,000 and 1-2 weeks that the plant will have to be shut down). That's after it fails its Y2k test, like the manufacturer says it will. Crap.
This Power plant is fairly new, and one would expect things like this to happen. On older plants, we've got no problem, you say? Wrong-oh. All plants are constantly being repaired, replaced, upgraded. The manufacturer of choice for the utilities, (company name withheld), has major Y2K problems. Not counting the embedded chip thing.
I called the local municipal utility, who supplies our back up power, to inquire about their Y2K status. They don't believe in Y2K, I was told... They are doing nothing. They won't have a problem. I was told this this by their Chief Engineer. He also said he was taking all his money out of the bank by December next year.
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Roleigh Martin ourworld.compuserve.com
( easy to remember alias is: webalias.com )
(A Web Site that focuses on Y2k threat to Utilities, Banks & more)
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