I've found out that management of one of the mega mega towers downtown are still debating whether it would be safer to shut down power to all building systems for rollover or leave things running. The downside of shutting things down is that it has never been done there before, and they are worried about unknown problems that this may create. Apparently there is considerable disagreement amongst their expert engineers about what to do. This particular tower was built before the computer era, so although all systems are now state of the art, they have been added over time (unsystematically).

I would assume that they are not the only operation facing this dilemma and that there are probably many biggies (including manufacturing) who are still debating whether or not to just throw the breakers.

My question to this bulletin board, is whether the utilities are worried about predictability of load on New Years Eve. Is this a problem?

-- Anonymous, December 16, 1999

Answers

Hi David. My $.02: Because the load will be very light during the rollover (barring severe cold weather), and because utilities have to have extra generation on line as part of contingency plans, utilities strongly prefer that as much electrical load as possible be connected. This maximizes stability.

Predictability is not as much a concern, unless several large users plan to be off-line. You touched on something that is a concern, that some big customers didn't make the decisions about load levels until only within the past month.

-- Anonymous, December 16, 1999

David, I would suggest your building management contact the power company and discuss. Now here's my opinion - to increase your odds of something going very wrong, just do something you've never done before....;)

Regards,

-- Anonymous, December 17, 1999