Decreased reliability of the utility delievery systems!!!

Rick,

Caught your quote (as follows) at TB2000.

(snip) Cowles said he did not expect a "big bang" on Jan. 1, 2000, but rather a period of perhaps two to four weeks when errors accumulate in data processing and control systems. "If you don't start dealing with those errors during the period when they are accumulating, you are going to see some major crashes, but that is not unique to the electric utility industry."

He added that he expected some nuisance failures and a decline in the reliability of utility delivery systems next year. "I don't think we are going to see anything that is catastrophic, that meets the end-of-the-world predictions of some of the stronger Y2K pundits," Cowles said.(end snip)

Ok Rick, belly up to bar - drinks are on me. I understand the "nuisance failures". I have been referring to them as "cosmetic failures", but I quibble.

What I am REALLY interested in is a clarification regarding a "decline in the reliability of the utility delivery system." Some questions:

1. Which portion(s)/aspect(s) of the delivery system will be impacted?

2. When you say 'reliability' are you referring to a decline in dependability or security (or both), and will they result in customer outages or simply reduced safety margins?

3. What components do you see failing due to Y2K that will act as the catalyst for the "decline in reliability" and can you describe the sequence events from the failure mode to the manifestation of the reliability issue?

4. Will these Y2K failures occur on rollover, or as a result of a time window failure sometime after the rollover?

5. Will you release the specific equipment model and failure mode so effective remediation can be implemented?

6. How did you derive the 2-4 week prediction?

This is what we all have been waiting for. Thanks for responding. This information will be extremely helpful.

cl@sky.com

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

Answers

Rick,

Item #5 didn't specify serial numbers of the affected equipment but I think you better supply that too. Otherwise you will just get another query for that specific information. Obviously we have some remediation experts that are really trying to get to the bottom of this Y2k problem.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 1999

Im going to answer CLs questions as best I can, and in a manner that is (I hope) technically accessible to the majority of the forums readers. Those of you who are more techincally inclined can email me for a more detailed response to specific questions. This is the only response Ill make to these questions in this forum. I have answered each of these questions many, many times already; theres a thing called body of work that encompasses an evolution of opinion and accumulation of knowledge, over an extended period of time.

First off, with respect to the Reuters article, Nigel Hunt (the reporter) condensed a 45 minute phone interview, and explanation for each of the items, into about 30 seconds worth of the print equivalent of a soundbite. I will say that I feel Nigel at least did a balenced job in his article, seeking opinion outside of his normal journalistic comfort zone, rather than just going to the official sources.

The opinions I expressed in the article are no different than what Ive been saying for the better part of the last 18 months. You can go back to Drew Parkhills interview with me from October, 1998 and read basically the same thing (with a lot more explanation).

1. Which portion(s)/aspect(s) of the delivery system will be impacted?

Lets first define power delivery. Theres three major components to a typical regioinal power delivery system: generation, transmission, and distribution. Generation is the factory is where the power is produced. Transmission is the bulk product distribution pipeline. Distribution is the local (third tier; end user) end of the product distribution chain.

From a Y2k perspective, I expect disruptions in each of the three major components, somewhere in every geographic region on the planet. But lest you think Im less than forthright in this assessment, let me hasten to add that failures occur in each of the three major components of power delivery systems every day of the week. Each component of a typical power delivery system, though, has enough inherent redudancy that isolated failures are mostly transparent to the end user. The lights rarely go out, but when they do, its sometimes in a dramatic and totally unexpected fashion. (Ref: NYC blackouts, and the recent San Francisco blackout). More on this in a minute.

2. When you say 'reliability' are you referring to a decline in dependability or security (or both), and will they result in customer outages or simply reduced safety margins?

Both, and both. I fail to see, after observing industry work on Y2k (and more to the point: *participating* in this work) - how anyone who has ever dealt with probabalistic risk assessment can even begin to say that the Y2k issue wouldnt result in reduced safety margins. When you have an organization like the NRC backing off on some of its most basic regulatory tennents simply because of Y2k, you are (at least in some small manner) reducing safety margins. And if every industry, every government agency, every business is reducing safety margins even just a wee bit, the net result to society as a whole is a big reduction in overall safety margins. Safety margins are not linear. They are exponential in nature.

3. What components do you see failing due to Y2K that will act as the catalyst for the "decline in reliability" and can you describe the sequence events from the failure mode to the manifestation of the reliability issue?

Im going to give a very simplistic explanation here. All the average person needs to understand is that most operationally important process control systems in any business or industry wont quit operating because of a single failure in the system. This is because there is a degree of fault tolerance built into every important control system, regardless of the industry. When the inherent fault tolerance of complex systems becomes saturated, the system begins to fail. Sometimes this fault tolerance saturation is instantaneous (such as in the San Francisco example), sometimes it takes a long time to play out (such as in the Western U.S. power outage from several years ago).

ANY single or multiple component failure in a complex control system could act as the catalyst for a decline in reliability. It could be a single motherboard failure, or a UPS that doesnt correctly sense and respond to an instrument loop power failure because the UPS wasnt challenged until two weeks after 1/1/2000.

I have a counter challenge for CL (Ive been trying to do this all weekend, and it ends up too frigging technical every time): write a simple explanation of one out of two taken twice logic that the readers of this forum can understand. Its very basic control logic, but such a description would explain very clearly the concept of fault tolerant systems. (Any other industry regulars are welcomed to take a crack at this, as well.)

4. Will these Y2K failures occur on rollover, or as a result of a time window failure sometime after the rollover?

Both.

5. Will you release the specific equipment model and failure mode so effective remediation can be implemented?

This is a somewhat disingenuous request, and you know it. ;-)

6. How did you derive the 2-4 week prediction?

First of all, its not a prediction - its no more than an educated guess about how the problem will *most likely* manifest itself, and again, I havent changed my opinion on this since at least the middle of 1998. I arrived at this conclusion as no more than an educated SWAG based on my own analysis of the data and observations that Ive compiled while actually working on the problem for clients - much the same way that many electric industry personnel have derrived that there will be zero impact. The same way that Ed Yardeni arrived at his recession prediction. The same way that other economists have derrived that there will be zero impact on the economy.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 1999

With thanks to cl for the questions, and Rick's attentive answers,,,, - - -

Now I'd like to see a more in-depth visual spread sheet, of how this will play out.

ie: Rolling brown-outs, & rolling black-outs?

I don't even know what questions to ask. -What sort of automatic control mechanisms will manifest? -Could the power spike and drop repeatedly over and over?

-- Anonymous, November 28, 1999