If one of the four grids were to fail, would it be possible for a small region and its local power station to go off the grid and operate independently. Another way of putting this would be: Could a small town or smally city disconnect itself from the grid and still get its power form its local power plant.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1998

Answers

Steve:

This is pulled from Carolina Power & Light's Year 2000 Report as stated in their August 12, 1998 filing with the SEC located on CP&Ls web site and other places. To summarize, it reads under the sections "Risk Assessment & Contingency Plans:"

"The Company believes a more likely scenario is a temporary disruption of service to its electric customers, including the effect of cascading disruptions caused by other entities whose electrical systems are connected to the Company's.

"One of the Company's emergency plans specifically addresses emergency scenarios that may arise due to the fact electric utility systems throughout the southeast region of the United States are interconnected...The Company has the ability to isolate its transmission system either automatically or manually to mitigate the risk of cascading regional failures."

Oddly enough, in assessing the most reasonably worst case scenario, Carolina Power & Light said that would be if "key customers experienced significant reductions in thier power needs due to their own Year 2000 issues." Apparently, CP&L feels that if customer's demand for power is reduced by, let's say, an embedded chip problem, that would be the worst case scenario for the Company.

From what I gather from this statement, CP&L has the capacity to isolate itself from the grid, which under the extreme case, make sense. Maybe Rick Cowles can comment as to the plausibilty of this. Hope it helps.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1998

While many electric companies have the capability to 'isolate' themselves from the regional transmission network (provided a company has the ability to generate sufficient power on its own to meet customer needs), contractually, most would be at severe risk in doing so. Most are contractually bound to the regional power pool to provide a certain level of 'baseload' power at all times.

The short answer - technically, it's feasible for some companies to do this, realistically, it would probably be a legal nightmare and potentially lead to even further grid instabilities.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1998

Thank you, Charlie and Rick, for answering my question. I was wondering if letting areas isolate themselves, temporarily, would be an accepable contingency plan if one of the grids continually fails.

-- Anonymous, August 29, 1998

Not only a legal and concractual nightmare. Power companies are, to the best of my knowledge, controlled by the govt "Public Service Commissions". The only exception in my state are Rural Electric Coops, which BUY power from the "public companies". The PSC is obviously NOT gonna let companies "island". At least, not IMO:-)

-- Anonymous, August 30, 1998