Remember Springfield, Mo? Rick has this article on his homepage:

"Springfield City Utilities Plant Will do Y2k Outage Springfield, Mo. (September 21) - The Southwest Power Plant in Springfield, Missouri will be shut down for two weeks beginning on October 15, 1998, to review station systems for Y2k related problems. "Weve identified about 215 different systems that may have a Y2K problem," says Gary Stueve, the Southwest Power Plants Electrical Maintenance Supervisor. "Embedded in there somewhere is a little clock thats looking at the calendar date. Thats the one youve got to be concerned about." Shutting down the Southwest Power Plant is not an unusual occurrence. Its done on a regular basis for routine maintenance. But Springfield City Utilities officials say this shutdown has just one purpose: looking for Y2K problems. Stueve says workers will check the entire plant for Y2K problems. Then all the clocks will be set ahead to the year 2000. The plant will then simulate a start-up. "Well see what happens," said Stueve."

Well, the link is dead. Are they still in business? How did the tests go? What happened? =========================================================

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1998

Answers

Michael, I e-mailed the plant superintdent asking about the results of the test ( I too am very intrested in this) he replied with " the results of the test are not yet available" He promissed to send the soon to be released "press release" I doubt it will contain any usefull info as to how serious this mess will really be. I will pass on any information I recieve on this. It seems by withholding information the utililities are only providing fuel for panic. It sure gets cold here in Wyoming.

Concerned in Casper

-- Anonymous, November 12, 1998

A very good question - one I've been receiving frequently over the past few weeks.

It's difficult to discern a reason for delayed reporting of results, particularly if the results were positive. In the absence of reporting to the contrary, one could conclude that, given the heightened media interest in this particular plant, that the results were not encouraging. Think about it - if the results were clean, would it not make sense that they (and the industry in general, particularly NERC, EEI, APPA and EPRI) would be broadcasting the "good news" as quickly and widely as possible??

Springfield City Utilities stuck their neck out when they announced to the world that they would be taking an outage specifically for investigating Y2k impacts. The outage has been over for quite some time now. I would hope that they decide to make some public statements in the near future.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 1998