http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:COMP66/1:COMP66092499.html

I thought this article raised an interesting Y2K question and didn't get much of an answer except the "Don't Worry" boiler plate. To not offend sensibilities let's change the scenario a little. A severe solar storm has wreaked havoc with the Canadian and Northern East Coast electric grids. Which portions of the electric grid, rural, or urban are more robust? Which could get back on their feet quickest after a major setback? Are rural areas entirely, partially or marginally dependent on large urban generation centers. What about distribution, is it easier to keep an urban or rural distribution grid running under harsh conditions. I realize there is no one answer to this question and it is complicated by the sparsity of data on smaller generating units. There are plenty of reasons to argue against cities as safe havens in times of crisis, yet there are also people in North carolina still without electricity or potable water. Historically rural outages are commonplace yet two high profile outages this past summer, Chicago and New York, were urban and spared the surrounding rural areas. I'm not trying to make any prognostications on Y2K and the grid but if one runs with the party line of scattered outages can any generalizations be made as to where thoses outages might be more likely to occur?

-- Anonymous, September 27, 1999

Answers

Paul,

I am not from the electric industry, but since no one has yet responded to your question, I'll take a crack at it:

Cameron Daley, the chief operating officer of Tava/R.W.Beck, which tested and upgraded systems for more than 100 U.S. utilities was quoted as saying, "The utilities most distracted by deregulation aren't doing enough to identify and prevent problems. There are a number of instances where utilities didn't go deep enough into their systems -- they accepted vendors' words that parts of a system were compliant." The logical implication of this statement is that the farther along your state is along the road to deregulation, the higher the likelihood that your utilities will have problems. In my opinion, Daley is one of the few people in the country who is in a position to know anything about the results of electric utility Y2K audits who has been willing to say anything publicly.

I would suggest that you take a good look at Rick's risk assessment form. It gives a number of good criteria through which you can make an educated guess about the relative likely post Y2K performance of different electric utilities.

Some other thoughts:

During the winter, demand for electricity, relative to local generation capacity, will be much less in the southern part of the U.S. than in the Northern U.S. and Canada. If there is a blast of particularly cold weather in January, 2000, it is possible that very high demand for electricity in the Northern U.S. will coincide with whatever generation capacity problems Y2K might bring. This would not be good. I know that the regional grids are designed to compensate for local capacity problems in situations like this, but I have to assume that in the post Y2K environment at least some of the southern utilities will be making absolutely sure that they can take care of their own customers before they transfer any 'surplus' electricity anywhere else. Incidentally, the latest long range weather forecast from the U.S. government predicts that the current 'LaNina' condition in the Pacific Ocean will continue into the coming winter. Historically, La Nina winter conditions have been associated with extremely cold weather in western and central Canada. El Nino led to warm and mild winters in the northern U.S. La Nina is the opposite of El Nino, so unfortunately, it looks like cold weather could be a very real problem in the U.S. this winter.

Another way to assess your local electric utility is to look at the quality of their management. Do outages occur all too frequently and do they seem to take an inordinate amount of time to be repaired because repair staff has been cut back to pump up corporate profits or has your utility maintained its equipment properly? I would bet that well managed utilities will have started working on the Y2K problem earlier and devoted relatively more resources to dealing with it.

You can also judge the relative willingness of your local utility to share detailed information about its Y2K remediation efforts with the general public. The Year 2000 Problem U.S. Senate committe has recognized that there is a positive correlation between companies' and industries' willingness to communicate their Y2K program information and their Y2K status. No or less communication = higher likelihood of a problem. For example, my local utility is PG&E. Earlier this year a spokesman for Intel Corporation implied that PG&E had "stonewalled" Intel's attempts to get information about PG&E's Y2K remediation efforts. Also, in the 'Y2K Pentagon Papers' it was indicated that the only information that the U.S. Navy was able to get from PG&E was what appeared on PG&E's Y2K website. (i.e., PG&E apparently stonewalled the U.S. Navy too! ) Also, earlier this year PG&E was required to file a report with the California Public Utilities Commission, pertaining to their Y2K status and remediation program. According to published reports, PG&E stamped every single page of the report "highly confidential" which had the legal effect of preventing even members of the California legisature from reading the report. PG&E was the only electric utility in the state of California to do this. I can't help wondering exactly what it was that PG&E did not want the members of the California legislature to see. Needless to say, this type of close to the vest behavior does not exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about PG&E's post Y2K prospects. (I don't think I've ever in my life hoped so much that I was wrong about something.) Hope these ideas are helpful to you. Remember, nobody really knows what's going to happen. We're all just making best guesses. I keep coming back to Bonnie Camp's line about preparation before Y2K being a 'nobrainer'. Truer words were never spoken.

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

I've given some though to this because I live in a rural area. Folks living in rural areas are often served by REA which does not have much generating capacity and only serve via distribution. The question remains: Will our failures be greater in generation or distribution? If we have a reduction in the ability to generate power than a moral decision must be made "whom shall we serve" or "who can we serve", the rural or urban parts of our country. I would expect the urban sectors to be first in line and whatever is left over distributed to the REA's who must again make a moral decision, because of reduced supply, into which substation they would serve via rolling blackouts. I use the term moral because someone will make the decision whether it is YOU or I that will do without.

Tommy

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

Paul,

While I am in the electric industry, I doubt I could offer anything much more definitive than what Jeff has offered relative to your suggested scenario. But here goes.

From what I have read regarding solar flares, the March 13, 1989 loss of the Hydro Quebec system was confirmed to be the result of a solar induced geomagnetic magnetic storm. Magnetic storms cause transformer saturation that can result in reduced or distorted voltages and causing severe voltage oscillations and power swings At 2:45 a.m., the Hydro Quebec 735 kV system lost 5 transmission lines from James Bay and resulted in the loss of about 44% of their on-line generation capacity. At the time, total system demand included 19,400 MW of internal load, 1,325 MW of exports and another 625 MW being exported from generation facilities electrically isolated from Hydro Quebecs system. The near instantaneous loss of some 9,450 MW of generation caused the cascading failure to be complete within just a few seconds.

Interestingly, the entire bulk delivery system is reported to have been re-energized within about 10 hours and all but about 17% of customers restored. Personally, I find this extraordinary considering the size of their system and the complexity of restoration. As I understand it, many of these customers were mostly affected by local distribution problems that resulted from cold load pick-up. This is a phenomenon that is common, particularly in cold climates, where electrical heating load is off for some period and all thermostats cycle to on and simply wait to be energized when power is restored.

When the circuit is re-energized from the local distribution substation, the inrush of current peaks rapidly and can cause an over- current relay to open the breaker. Typically, this can force the utility to break up or sectionalize local distribution circuits by opening manual or remotely controlled switches and restore power incrementally from the source out to the termination of the circuit. While this is not difficult to do, the process does consume personnel resources and time.

Unfortunately, this action is often misinterpreted by consumers as prioritized restoration by utilities, even in those instances where there may have been no predetermined restoration sequence at all. This is not to say that a customer that shares a distribution circuit with an critical service provider, such as a hospital, will not have power before a friend that is served from a purely residential circuit. This happens all the time! At lunch the next day, Alice remarks, Do you know that it took over 5 hours for my power to be restored after the storm last night. Mary retorts that Well our power was out for only a few minutes, I was amazed at how fast they responded to our call! Obviously, Mary and Alice may share the same position on a priority list as residential customers, but both are, most likely, completely unaware that Marys home and the hospital 5 miles away, coincidentally shares the same service delivery path.

I am a little confused as to your first question relative to the robustness of the grid system. If you mean to ask In general, which North American transmission systems can withstand localized transients best? honestly, I couldnt and wouldnt begin to speculate. There are too many variables including the nature of the problem, operating conditions, loading, coordinated relay protection and coordinated operator response to name just a few. However, if you meant to ask. Which areas of the country are more susceptible to transmission transients due to solar flare activity?. I might suggest the following site address:

http://www.mpelectric.com/storms/

It appears the most significant threat to electric transmission systems from geomagnetic storms are what the author, John G. Kappenman, refers to as fried green transformers or Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) caused transformer failures. Interestingly, he makes the point that some damage resulting from GIC in generation step-up transformers is cumulative and may not become apparent for months or even years. In terms of rural vs urban advantages or disadvantages, I do not think GIC induced failures discriminate one from another. Regardless, from the chart, you can see that the most densely populated areas of the northeast suffer 60% higher failure rates in those transformers that exhibit damage similar to that caused by GIC.

Sorry this was so long but I hope it helps.. at least a little.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

Appreciate the indepth answers. I used the Solar flare idea, not only to remind us that we might be in for a whole complex of insults to electrical power; solar flares, Y2K, economic travails (fuel availablity), leap year issues, unexpected demand patterns secondary to a unique holiday and to changes from contingency planning by large electrical customers for the "so called" (grin) Y2K problem, but mainly becuase I didn't want to rehash and/or get drawn into the predicting the risk of the "so called" :) Y2K issue to the electric grid debate, which I consider currently unsolvable for all intents and purposes other than a degree of personal preparation. Now there's a run on sentence.

While it seems close to self-evident that if power or basic services were out for an extended time a rural area would be preferable to an urban area. I suspect Ed Yourdan might agree. It is by no means certain that rural areas will not face far worse power outages from the "so called"(LoL) Y2K problem then urban areas. I don't pretend that any of this is accurately predictable, but could a one week power outage in Chicago equate to a 3 month power loss in Pedunk, Arkansas, or even vice-versa I'd be the first to say a camping trip might not be a bad idea for the holiday, but I feel stymied in trying to parse this problem into any form that allows for a very directed approach to personal contingency planning. Thanks again for the thoughts and info.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999