I'm very new to Y2K. My wife was listing to a radio broadcast and heard a little bit about it. My ? is with Elec. will the generators in Oklahoma go down during this Y2K thing or not ? I'm concern about food,utilities,water can you help me along with this. Send info JDFGuitar@aol.com

Thank You Very Much

Yours I want to know !!

-- Anonymous, October 25, 1998

Answers

Danny, here are some links that will help you understand what is going on with Y2K. I strongly suggest lots of prayer about this. Mail me if I can help you further. God Bless. mrmike

http://www.softcom.net/users/jblee/Power_Grid.htm http://www.yourdon.com/index2.html http://www.y2kwatch.com/

-- Anonymous, October 25, 1998

Hello, Danny. I have been researching the Year 2000 problem for months. One thing I can tell you is that in all that time, I have not found anyone knowledgeable who believes this computer problem will have NO effect. Even the most optimistic admit there will be "bumps in the road". From there the opinions vary from potholes in the road, to tractor-trailor size holes in the road, to the destruction of the road altogether. Awareness of how dependent our global society is upon the proper functioning of computers, and how integrated those computer systems are in every aspect of our lives, has been slow but is now gaining momentum as the facts surface.

Mr. Mike has kindly provided you with links to some sites which have lots of information. These sites also have other links which provide all types of resources for not only learning about the Y2K problem, but what you can personally do to prepare your own family for probable disruptions. If you are looking for guarantees that your power will stay on, you won't find them. You will discover in your research that guarantees are something no industry or government agency can give, and with good cause. You're doing the right thing in trying to learn more, and I personally believe your wife's concerns are valid ones. Best wishes to you in your efforts!

-- Anonymous, October 25, 1998

I am an electronic engineer working for a controls company who supplies the control systems for power generation prime movers. The company I work for is a leader in this industry, doing over 500M in sales per year.

I would like to address the Y2K issue as related to our products. To do this, let me start off by giving a brief discussion of what our products do in the power generation application. The base for providing power is a prime mover (engine or turbine). The prime mover uses fuel to produce rotational energy. This rotational energy is translated into electrical energy through a generator. To vary the power produced by the generator, the amount of fuel to the prime mover is varied.

My company's basic products control the fuel to the prime mover. Many of these devices are analog or mechanical in nature, and are not affected by the Y2K rollover. I would estimate that 40-50% of our generator set application sales are these type of products.

Stepping up a level, are the base digital controls used to control the prime mover power. These digital controls have no real time clock, and operate directly from the core processor operating system. These products, therefore, are not affected by the Y2K rollover either. These products account for about 40% of our generator set application sales.

On the top level are the complex digital systems. These systems may have real time clocks, and may interface with Unix or OS-2 operating systems, and therefore may be susceptible to the Y2K rollover problem. However, the use of date coding in the applications software is not integral to the operation of the equipment. There is no function in the software which links machine operation to a date. Worst case would be an incorrect date display on a operator control panel screen.These complex systems are typically used on critical applications (large power producers, satellite tracking systems, etc), and have manual backups which allow continued operation of the prime mover in the event of a total control system failure. The sales of these high end digital systems make up the final 10 -20% of our generator application sales.

In many applications, especially the lower end products, there are typically some sort of upper level controllers that take care of starting/stopping, and monitoring the prime mover. I can make no statements regarding the health of these products at the time of the Y2K rollover. However, even if these systems were to fail, manual operation of the prime mover would still be possible. In many systems, this type of failure mode is accounted for, and the system essentially has auto/manual switch configurations for this purpose. Switching to manual operation totally bypasses any upper level control commands, and puts operation of the prime mover directly in the hands of the operator . In systems where this type of failure is not accounted for, the generator could be brought back on line by bypassing any inputs provided by the upper level controller with manual command inputs provided by jumper wires, etc to the base prime mover control. It is a rather sloppy way of taking care of the problem, but it does work (believe it or not these type of system failures occur even without the Y2K problem!).

I doubt that we will experience any major power outages in the US due to the Y2K bug due to failures of the prime mover control systems. This might all be a moot point, however, if those Russian computers controlling the warheads have a Y2K countdown problem....

Jeff

-- Anonymous, October 28, 1998