Hi. Hope you don't mind an unsolicited e-mail but I read through a
chain of USENET comments on our readiness for Y2K and thought I'd try
and clarify a few points folks still seem to be unsure about. (I can
speak pretty authoritatively in this regard. I'm director of external
liaison for Hydro's Y2K program.)
QUESTION:
What do we mean when we say a system is "Y2K ready"? Are we playing
semantics to avoid admitting a system's not "Y2K compliant"?
ANSWER: The two terms are used differently by different people. For us,"Y2K compliant" means the system never had any Y2K issues. We examined it, found that it could handle any dates without problems, so to us it's "Y2K compliant". For systems that needed some repair work, after the fix has been done and tested satisfactorily, approved by line management, and quality-approved by our external QA reviewers, we classify the system as "Y2K ready".
QUESTION:
What do we mean by "working with our suppliers"?
ANSWER:
Part of the repair work leading to certification could involve working
with suppliers (if it wasn't something we built ourselves). A lot of
stuff we got from suppliers is "one of" systems, custom-built for us.
Some things are off-the-shelf, like MS OFFICE, others are very specific
to our plant operations and so we had to work with the supplier.
QUESTION:
What about municipal utilities like Toronto Hydro?
ANSWER:
Ontario Hydro is working closely with the MEU's in Ontario and has
already tested points where our equipment connectes to theirs, looking
for Y2K problems that could interrupt the energy transfer. We didn't
find any problems at those interfaces. And we know that the MEU's also
have Y2K programs in place and are working diligently to ensure their
systems are ready for the year 2000. Finally, we know the kinds of
technology the local utilities are using, because we use it too. And we
found very few of those systems which had the potential of actually
interrupting the electricity service if they failed due to Y2K or any
other reason. Remember, a lot of the electricity system pre-dates the
computer age and is mostly mechanicial, not digitally controlled.
Failures would, if they happened, cause business problems like
difficulties in metering and billing, etc., and only rarely would
actually cause the lights to go out
I've attached our latest letter of assurance to customers, for your
information. I know it'l be a great disappointment to the TEOTWAWKI
crowd, but the electricity industry has found very few Y2K problems in
our embedded processors and process-control systems. We did find some,
and the system would have had serious problems if we'd done nothing, but
the bottom line here is that we only see a slightly higher risk of power
loss due to Y2K than you live with every day from storms, vandalism,
etc.
Bill Imms
<>
-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999