Do these contingencies plans make sense

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My utility company sent me this info about their contingency plans. It looks as though I should have little to worry about or should I? Will that "black start" work?

Contingency planning, is done at virtually every step of the Energy delivery process, so listing all plans, would be pretty much impossible. Among the more prominent plans, would be that there will be no vacation, company-wide, during the months of December and into January, until we have determined that all possible Y2K potential problems, have been taken care of.

Along those same lines, on the night of December 31, 1999, key Technical people, will be working, monitoring the regional grid and other mission critical systems, for abnormalities and other potential problems. These would be people who would normally be "called in", should difficulties occur, but who will already be in, working.

An advantage of this, is that we will have about 15 or 16 "New Years", before Y2K actually reaches us, as each time zone moves into the year 2000, these technicians will be able to monitor any problems that are occuring and if necessary, do contingency planning implementation, based on what they have seen, from other utility companies, in the other time zones.

Another major contingency plan, involves a "worst case scenario", namely the collapse of the regional electric grid, because of problems caused by another utility. While we are legally obligated to the grid, if we see problems occuring, we can attempt to isolate ourselves, but this is technically very difficult, so the possibility could occur (though I have to caution you, we have been in contact with other members of the grid and feel they are going to be compliant, so this is basically just preparation on our part, for every possibility, even though, at this point, we feel the possibilities of having to implement this, are remote), that the grid would collapse and there would be a widespread outage.

If this does occur, we have a couple of plants within our system, which have the capability of what is called "Black Start", which means that these plants can restart, without an outside power source and then these plants can in turn, restart --or "jump start" --the rest of the plants, within our system. With this capability, we feel that even in a "worst case scenario", the total collapse of the regional grid, we can get ourselves back up and delivering energy, on our own, within a matter of hours, not days.

We haven't set a cut-off date, at this time, mainly because we are getting satisfactory responses, from our vendors. But this doesn't rule out the possibility, of a future cut-off date, should a vendor show that they aren't going to be Y2K ready. Our contact, will be ongoing, throughout the year.



-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

Answers

David,

Utilities have had blackstart plans for years and years and years. Luckily, they rarely have needed to be implemented. Drills have historically been held periodically. I'm sure every utility will be update and drilling blackstart in conjuction with Y2K prep. You utility seems to be doing all the right things, but I doubt they'll be needed - even though the practice is beneficial anyway.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999


I agree with CL, kind of. Electric companys that generate their own power have historically (at least since the NY blackout in 1965) had at least one unit they could call "black start". That was one of the lessons learned from the 1965 blackout.

The response you received from the company you do your electric business with was one of the more forthright responses that I've seen. It acknowledges the legal implications of disconnecting from the grid, and also the fundamental technical difficulties in doing so. This is the first time that I've seen such an acknowledgement.

Just as an aside, this statement concerned me somewhat:

An advantage of this, is that we will have about 15 or 16 "New Years", before Y2K actually reaches us, as each time zone moves into the year 2000, these technicians will be able to monitor any problems that are occuring and if necessary, do contingency planning implementation, based on what they have seen, from other utility companies, in the other time zones.

It concerned me principally because (as I mentioned in my interview with Drew Parkhill) following time zone transitions during that day can not be really classified as contingency planning. At that stage of the game, such a strategy will be more of a "damage control" exercise.

Since they sent you a letter, I'd be tickled pink to know what company we're talking about here. Do you feel comfortable in sharing that information?

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999


Lets just say that this midwest utility company has been very progressive in their views about y2k. They have gone as far as to say "there are No Guarentees" on what will happen on 01/01/00.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 1999

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