Power for 750,000 homes and not one embedded chip issue???

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990216/wa_avista__1.html

Comments?

-- Brett (savvydad@aol.com), February 16, 1999

Answers

Brett,

My local electric utility has said on TV that it can't guarantee power in January, 2000. Why? Although they can test one part of their system or another, end-to-end testing is what's needed, and it's not feasible.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 16, 1999.


Good. This company spent the time and money to check things -- fix things, test things. They found fewer than we expect, but that's okay too. 500/11,000 is 0.5%, lower than than the 1-2% originally estimated, but reasonable.

So when (if) something unexpected fails, they may be able to isolate it and fix in a timely manner.

Remember people, we never said that everything everywhere would fail completely - the problem can be fixed and prevented. If, as happened here, time, money, and effort are spent early enough and in the right places.

By the way, how many power companies are left? How many days are left?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 16, 1999.


Here's an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about Peco Energy Co. The news is both good and bad. Title, link and two quotes:

"Electricity industry optimistic about 2000"

http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Feb/16/front_page/ELEC16.htm

[snip]

A small outage could cause a bigger one. And that is why Peco is spending $75 million to check its infrastructure for problems that could turn the lights out.

The project has been an eye-opening experience, said Dave Hoefner, Y2K project manager.

"We retired and replaced over one-half of the [software and hardware] portfolio we had two years ago," Hoefner said. "We have uncovered systems we did not know existed; discovered external software that is mission-critical....We had many suppliers whose documentation said they were Y2K compliant and they failed our tests."

[snip]

Peco's $75 million Y2K budget is three times its earlier estimate. It had spent about $21 million of that through the end of 1998.

[snip]

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 16, 1999.


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