FactFinder,

As a electric utility insider, and as one who has worked extensively on Y22K remediation in that industry, can you please prrovide one or more examples of how a two digit program date could cause a elecctric generator to trip. I have followed your posts wiith interest and know that you don't think embedded chips will be a problem but am curious to know what would have been a major problem if it had not been addressed during remediation.

-- Watcher7 (anon@anon.com), August 29, 1999

Answers

Watcher7:

How they can occur is very simple and you can find the information on the web. Why they can't be effectively tested by utilities is also common knowledge. I'm not talking about comments on forums like this, but about technical reports. If you have been working on Y2K problems, then you already know this. This is just a technical problem. It can be fixed, perhaps, not perfectly, but in can be fixed. The question is will it be. I still read reports by utility exec's [smaller ones] who say that no problems exist; it is all a hoax. I don't know of any failures that have occurred so far, but it is only August, 99. Perhaps you should check the Coast Guard. From their public releases, they seem to be very concerned by this subject.

Best wish

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 29, 1999.

Z1X, You say

"I still read reports by utility exec's [smaller ones] who say that no problems exist; it is all a hoax."

I have never seen such a statement. Would you please give a source to this kind of statement? I have seen people state that it has been said, but no source has been given.

Is it just another urban myth that this has been stated?

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), August 29, 1999.

Cherri:

Yep, it has been said, but this is very small stuff. The last I heard was from central Kansas. Those folks don't put stuff on the Web, so you'll just have to take my word for what I read in the paper. I move around alot.

Best wishes,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 29, 1999.

Drew Parkhill from CBN News posted this in March. As far as I know, no other info has been found on this beyond the original post. <:)=

did you all notice this y2k power plant example in that chicago trib story?

**As part of an experiment last year, technicians at the huge Xingo hydroelectric dam on Brazil's Sao Francisco River set the dates on the plant's main computer forward to Jan. 1, 2000.

**What happened next is still sending chills through Latin America.

**"When they put the date forward, the whole control board went haywire," remembers Marcos Ozorio, one of the members of Brazil's presidential Year 2000 commission. "Twelve thousand warning lights flashed all across the board, with all kinds of alarm information."

**Technicians quickly switched back the date, and are now ferreting out the plant's Y2K bugs. But "if you had been surprised by a situation like this, what you'd have had to do is shut down the plant until you found where the failures were," Ozorio said. "Automatically you'd be taking off the energy board 30 percent of northeast Brazil."

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 29, 1999.

Cherri:

By the way, I don't know if this was just someone shooting-off his mouth or if it was official company policy. This is Kansas: not California.

Best wishes,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 29, 1999.

Cherri:

There seems to be a large gulf of understanding between you and a large part of the country. Here, in cowboy country, a person says what he thinks, not what some attorney says he should say. That means the person is speaking for him/her self not the company. Everyone knows this. If he/she is speaking for the company, they say so. But at times, they speak for themselves. Just because they are uniformed doesn't detract from a right that has been lost in Ca.

Best,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 29, 1999.

Z!X, If this data is on the net, please prrovide the url.

Sysman, I don't know if the power plant in Brazil was built to the the same specs and standards as the ones here in the US.

If someone other than FactFinder, with electric utility experience has the answer, would be most interested in hearing it.

-- Watcher7 (anon@2anon.com), August 29, 1999.