Is New York's Con Edison y2k vulnerable or not?

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I've been having a dialog with a friend of mine concerning the vulnerability of electric utilities in general. After looking into the question of automatic control system dependency, he suggested that New York's Con Ed is not vulnerable to embedded chip problems because they have a manual back-up. Is he correct? I've included his e-mail to me to make his point as clear as possible.

"I have a very good personal friend ( Chem Eng. also) who is heading the purchasing dept at Con Edison, I have asked him the situation there. His reply was that his entire department, several 100, have already converted and succesfully implemented the switch [to y2k compatibility]. Furthermore, they require all their vendors to have done the same. Also, Con Edison buys electrical energy from remote cheaper generators at the tune of 60-70% of their sold energy. He furthermore stated that all of Con Edison's generating plants can be switched to manual mode and suprisingly, he also stated that most of the palnts actually run in maual mode as a standard. I read in my professional computer magazines various stories of successful switch and implementation to Y2K compatibility."

-- Anonymous, August 01, 1998

Answers

I view "a friend of a friend in the industry" type reports with some skepticism. Such reports generally tend to be somewhat inaccurate in their assessment, because most of the 'friends' don't have any direct involvment with the Y2k programs at the companies, and even if they do, something gets lost in the translation.

All electric companies, large and small, are vulnerable to the problem. To be complacent in assessment of the impact, and to not absolutely assure Y2k readiness is going to be viewed as criminally negligent post-01/01/2000.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 1998


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