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ComEd Inspection Turns Up 41 Problems

"A sweeping weekend-long inspection of Commonwealth Edison's distribution system uncovered 41 problems with the potential to lead to further outages, utility officials said Monday....

"Also on Monday, ComEd responded to concerns by city officials that the company's recent problems cast doubt on its Y2K readiness, saying there is 'no link' between the two issues.

"'What we've looked at in Y2K readiness are the computerized devices that perform various date-sensitive functions,' said Alan Ho, corporate manager-year 2000 for Unicom. 'Those are not issues of cracked insulation, or degraded splices due to heat stress.'"

This article is obviously completely wrong. I mean, all those utility officials, all those utility workers, engineers, technicians, whatever... all of them have to use electricity like the rest of Chicagoans. They have a big stake, a personal stake as well as a professional stake, in getting the juice through. So, the idea that they would let so many problems crop up and fester is just preposterous. Right?

Unless some of them are greedy and short-sighted and lazy. Unless some of them care more about the bottom line than about anything else. Unless....

Wait... I keep forgetting... for some reason, electrical utility staff aren't normal human beings like the rest of us. Somehow, they manage to screen out all the lazy, incompetent, short-sighted people before they get in. Right?

"No link". Yeah. Sure. Right. They can't get things right, like making sure trees are trimmed and maintaining or replacing mechanical equipment. But they can get things right, like fixing complex computerized systems. Yeah. Sure. Right.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Answers

Lane,

ComEd has been in electric utility news for over a year now. They are one of those companies that apparently started way too late and have way too many things to correct. And they service a huge market in the Chicago and surrounding area, so the exposure is very serious.

Perhaps a better way to judge what is really going on with them would be to find out how many of their own people have been buying and installing their own backup generators. Also, how many public service sectors in the Chicago area are installing backup power? Philadelphia, near where I live, is spending money are very large generators right now to try insure that water and sewer pumps will continue to function. They must not be totally sure that power from PECO and the grid will be reliable. I expect that some officials in the higher levels of government are sharing their concerns about reliable electric come next January.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

I was listening to the radio this morning. I heard there was another power outage effecting 8,000 or so. They were going to be bringing in outside people to recheck everything out...

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Dear Lane, The story in the link provided has only a passing reference to y2k. I suppose an inference can be made that a power company with so many leaky transformers and lines overgrown with trees could also have many other (y2k) problems, but this is perhaps a little weak. I confess I haven't kept up with specific y2k-related reports regarding ComEd. Is the "inference" justifiable?

M.W.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Why not, MW? If the company is managed and operated so poorly that a weekend inspection, after public and government outrage, could find 41 errors (some easy to correct, some not so easy) that could affect distribution, why on earth should anybody believe that they got their act together for Y2K? The same people managing and operating the company for everything else are the same people managing and operating the company for Y2K.

Perhaps I misunderstand, but you seem to be focussing on the leaky transformers, overgrown trees, etc. Those are the results. I am focussing on what causes those results: management and operation of the company by human beings. If those individuals are incompetent, short-sighted and/or greedy, they didn't shed those qualities for Y2K remediation.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

M.W.,

Not only do I think Lane is correct in what he is saying, but it goes even further than that. The ComEd owners have been trying to sell/unload a lot of their generating facilities for many months now. So, when is the last time that you ever saw any company, or individual for that matter, spend a bunch of money on maintenance or upgrades on the thing they had up for sale. Human nature is to "just keep it running" but minimize extra costs on something up for sale. We sometimes forget that corporations are just human beings at the bottom line and behave as all others do when making expenditures.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

As someone whose "heat is on the line" here - ComEd is our Power company - let me give you a couple of examples of why I'm worried:

1. As late as last summer,Com Ed was trying to sell off all of their plants and become a distributor - not a supplier. Unfortunately, no takers. (Hmmmm, I wonder why.)

2. Com Ed did not start remediation planning until late in 1997.

3. When I met with the Com Ed folks last October, their contigency plans included using manual overrides to keep the grid flowing - of course, they also admitted that it could take several days to track down the problem. Now, the same folks say - "No, it won't take several days, we never said it would take several days, I don't know how many days it will take - but it won't take several."

4. Com Ed engineers in this neck of the woods are installing generators and solar light panels in their own homes.

5. Last month, the CEO of Com Ed claimed that they were completely Y2K complaint - no caveats, no "mission critical systems only" - completely 100 percent compliant. Now, four major power outages in a week -- the happy face is beginnning to crack.

Terri Reid

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Teri, in reference to your No.5, Check out state.il.us/y2k/cms.html and click on utilities. Actually ComEd said they were 100% compliant as of June 1999. Right...I'd say it's time to get out of Dodge!

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Hi!

I looked up the Illinois Y2K site and saw Com Ed's claim of 100 prcent compliance - then I called the fellow in charge of the site. I asked him if Com Ed said they were compliant or ready - he said he's been using the term interchangably (oops!) and I explained NERC's definition of "ready." He said oops again and said that he was going to check what Com Ed really sent - He suggested I check out Com Ed's website myself and I'm on my way - tra-la, tra-la.

Terri

-- Anonymous, August 18, 1999

Reading my comments here, I thought I should make something clear.

I'm not slamming just utilities. I'm not slamming just those who work at utilities. I don't think there are more greedy/selfish/short- sighted/incompetent people in the utilities than there are in the rest of the world. I just don't think there are fewer in the utilities than in the rest of the world. I think they have their "fair" share, so to speak. And that's one of the reasons Y2K is as much a people problem as it is a computer problem.

-- Anonymous, August 19, 1999

I'm not the only one who thinks ComEd's historical performance is a clue about the competence of its Y2K program:

Edison power outages nothing new at Tenneco:

"Com Ed's apparent inability to solve a seemingly routine problem has [Shawn Kilpatrick, director of facility management for Tenneco Inc] dreading Jan. 1, when it will become apparent which computer systems have been upgraded to read '00' as the year 2000, not 1900. 'I have absolutely no confidence that ComEd is going to manage Y2K. That's based on my experience with these folks.'"

-- Anonymous, August 19, 1999

Lane, thanks for posting that link. It's rather ironic that part of the NERC-recommended system for utilities to evaluate vendors/third party providers is to go by the vendors past reliability performance before accepting their Year 2000 statements with no further validation.

It appears Mr. Kilpatrick of Tenneco has followed the same logic and given Commonwealth Edison a mark of vendor No-Confidence.

-- Anonymous, August 19, 1999

I have lived in ComEd's service area continuously since 1973. We have averaged one hour per year of outages, a good performance by industry standards. Customers in the City of Chicago proper average one-half hour per year, an even better record.

If you want an example of the kind of problems recently experienced here, look at Mr. Prosser's subsequent "Continuous Water Sprayers" post, which describes an almost identical (except for the initiating incident) sequence of events to that occurring during ComEd's two recent sub-station failures. Some of the scenarios from New Zealand provided by Malcolm in the earlier "brainstorming" post are also relevant. Y2K issues are not relevant to ComEd's recent problems - we are dealing with distribution system "dumb" component failures.

ComEd's Y2K program appears, from disclosures made available to Commercial Customers, to have been conducted in accordance with the practices and methods employed by nearly all large organizations in their Y2K inventory/assessment/remediation/testing/contingency planning activities. I see no reason to be less confident in them than any other company.

Most of ComEd's problems with distribution system capacity and undermaintenance are due to financial constraints imposed by the Illinois Commerce Commission in various rate cases surrounding the utility's nuclear generating plants. Many of the people yelling the loudest about the recent problems were also the ones who insisted that ComEd not be allowed to earn a profit on their investment in these plants. The resulting financial squeeze caused ComEd to cut back on investments and maintenance in other areas (the so-called "austerity program" of several years back). This is the only option available to managers of companies with expensive physical plants made up of long-lived assets (the railroad companies did the same thing for many years until bankruptcies, poor service and accidents from deteriorated track convinced the government to deregulate prices).

I hope it does not take many further examples of the consequences of underinvestment in critical infrastructure before the politicians wise up and acknowledge their part in creating this problem. But in the meantime, even though this is not a Y2K problem, it unfortunately appears ComEd is no longer viewed as a "trusted source" of Y2K information, in the sense described by Dick Mills in yesterday's (8/19) Westergaard 2000 article.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999

Thanks, Peter. I was forgetting to factor in "greedy/selfish/short- sighted/incompetent" politicians. :-)

-- Anonymous, August 20, 1999