(Note to sysops and others: This is being posted with prior approval of Mr. Cook, and was a wager made on this forum, to be settled here. I can forward the e-mail from him to you if you so desire. Because of the 3 day weekend for many, he might take a while to respond, so I ask that everyone give him a little time.)

In an April 16, 1999 thread "My response to Robert Cook regarding power readiness," I proposed a wager:

If more than one half of one percent of power goes off (as a percentage of total load) 6 hours before or after the transition (1/1/2000) due to y2k problems, I will post the following on this forum: I, Dan the power man, was obviously clueless as to the problems with power and y2k. I most humbly apologize to this forum for either inadvertently or purposefully misleading people." Similarly, you must admit the same if I win the wager.

Robert responded: Sir Daniel of the power company: I fully accept your wager...if Y2K events and fallout from Y2K-induced events are so negligible to allow the power industry to maintain the delivery of safe, reliable stable electric power across the US and Canada, I'll acknowledge the error of my prediction here and on the public stage downtown.

As a result of the events of the past few weeks, Robert, and based upon our agreement of this week, please settle the wager here on this forum.

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), January 14, 2000

Answers

Okay, I am first to risk being the fool. How did you keep it on? Are you working Miracles of Manual? What about all the "Dreaded Embeddeds"? Are you an expert in your tiny arena of life, or do you hold the grasp of the big "Kuhana"?

-- Fools rush in (to@ask@foradvice.com), January 14, 2000.

maybe they set the date back to 1969?

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 14, 2000.

Dan, aren't you missing something? Your apology?

I think you should post it here in the answers so it will be clearly seperated from the original post. It would also be more effective if you use larger type in a color so it stands out. Thanks.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), January 14, 2000.

Ta quote ma PO-lice scanner:

He has been advised.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 14, 2000.

Dan,

If Robert agreed you won the wager, that's between the two of you. But the power DID go off in several places according to some posters. How do you know whether or not it had to do with y2k? How much IS one-half of one percent of the total load? We had many power outs on December 30, not the 31st. I mean we had at least 20 short power outs that we were able to count, plus others while we were gone from the house. I just wonder if you won that bet or not, although in general the power doesn't seem to have y2k problems at this time.

-- helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), January 14, 2000.

I,for one,Will stand behind Mr.Cook.Although he may not remember me(as Dragnet)I worked on a Co-Gen with him (FWMC)in 85-86.I respected him then as I do know.FWIW the plant is still running on a 286 processor which has been backdated for rollover.IMHO problems have been diverted from a period of time where they could have been remediated,with somewhat controllable parameters,to a time of total instability.We've only shifted the problem to numerous timeframes in lieu of only 1/1/00.

-- Dragnet (Just@the.facts), January 15, 2000.

Rolling back the clocks works, obviously...

Until they have to trade data...

The problem has been postponed, not solved...

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 15, 2000.

Mr. Cook can pay up or not as he sees fit. The fact remains there were outages and brownouts in spite of the fact that at the time of year for least demand the utilities had one hundred percent of generating assets available and support to respond in order to accomplish an almost seamless rollover.

As demand rises in the spring manual responses will be less and less effective, IMO.

Regardless of the peramiters of the wager, the utilities hit a home run for the rollover. For that I am most thankful.

I hope they are able to endure.

-- Tom Beckner (tbeckner@erols.com), January 15, 2000.

I just reread Dragnet's response and realised the signifigance.

-- Tom Beckner (tbeckner@xout.erols.com), January 15, 2000.

I remember Hawk over the 2 day or so rollover period naming all the places that had outages, most of which dis not make it to the national or even local media feeds...

Robert, mine's a pint!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 15, 2000.

We're STILL having all sorts of power problems ...

Yesterday, like most days since rollover, the voltage was all over the place. 'Normally,' the voltage at the outlet is between 118 and 121 Vac. We have been getting anywhere between 112 and 125 Vac ... at times, seeing as much as 10 volt changes within a few seconds.

Since rollover, we also experienced a week or so of frequency stability problems, measured with both a frequency counter AND an oscilloscope at between 45 and 70 Hz ... normally 60 +/- 1 Hz.

Power has not been 'safe, nor reliable' several pieces of electronic equipment (including my hf ham radio transceiver and a receive,), and a few electrical appliances (one sewage lift station pump, two electric hot water heaters, a microwave oven, and a refrigerator) in this housing project have fried.

Methinks Robert might just have won that bet after all. :-)

Michael ThunderLight, PhD, MSEE

-- hiding in plain (sight@edge of.nowhere), January 15, 2000.

I must say from personal experiance that the argument that "Bad Time Date Stamps" from set back computer clocks may be a red herring issue in many cases. I have one machine at work which I could not bring into Y2K compliance, so I set the clock back 10 years. Now this computer time and date stamps all of the raw data that my company produces. However this data is worked on by several other computers before it leaves the company. The downstream computers, which are Y2K compliant have been programed to ignore the old date stamp and to attach a Y2K compliant Time and date stamp to the data.

I know this fix will not work in every case, but it works for me.

-- Helium (HeliumAvid@yahoo.com), January 15, 2000.

The key words in the wager are these: ". . . safe, reliable stable electric power. . . ." I do not know about safe, but I understand from news and first-hand reports on this forum that power is not quite that reliable any more (if only because the date set-back fixes are only temporary) and, judging from the number of surges abd reports of identified frying objects, power surges render the supply unstable. It all depends on one's definition of the words "safe, reliable, stable."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 15, 2000.

I don't know WHO wins the bet, but y'all who are pointing to present problems might take note of "If more than one half of one percent of power goes off (as a percentage of total load) 6 hours before or after the transition (1/1/2000) due to y2k problems," and determine whether problems you've noticed or seen presented occurred within the 12-hour timeframe described.

I didn't MAKE the bet. I just read what it said.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.com), January 15, 2000.

The power went out in "Peace Farmers" neighbhorhood 12/31/99 midnight and Peace Farmer reported it. In his post he said he was glad he had a generator.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), January 15, 2000.

You read what Dan proposed, Anita. You didn't read Robert's counter proposal, which Dan apparently accepted.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 15, 2000.

Bar:

I have to wonder who will be adding up failures during this 12-hour period and doing the calculations to determine whether they indeed constitute >.5 of 1%. [Just know it won't be ME!]

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.com), January 15, 2000.

OG:

You're right. However, the counter-proposal was so vague as to be pretty useless, dontcha think? [no time-frame, no useful definition, etc.] I appreciate your pointing out my faulty reading skills. They can hash this one out themselves.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.com), January 15, 2000.

Anita -

Regarding my post; the frequency and voltage problems were occuring during the rollover time window ...

The failures of severa; pieces of equipment also occured during that time frame -

the receiver started out as a problem with the VFO - would not stay on frequency, and now the VFO needs to be repaired or replaced, several IC's are burnt black - at approximately 10pm on the 31st;

the transceiver blew 3 vacuum tubes - burnt out filaments - at about 1am on the 1st;

my microwave oven - the high voltage secondary of the power supply transformer (supplying voltage to the klystron) shorted out - at 3am on the 1st - the odor of burnt insulation still lingers 15 days later; and,

one of the housing complex's hot water heaters had a heating element and the thermostat fry - thermostat got hot enough from overvoltage that it actually flamed, fortunately breaker operated and fire self-extinguished (at 7:30pm on the 31st).

The problems with the ham radio equipment were discussed here on this forum real-time as they were occuring - along with the reasons why.

The remaining listed failures have, however, happened since. The refrigerator compressor fried yesterday, during a particularly bad period of severe voltage problems.

-- hiding in plain (sight@edge of.nowhere), January 15, 2000.

um - should have been several not severa; :-)

As a footnote - the problems with power have been SO severe, that an investment has been made in a 3-phase, 50KW/phase, 440V diesel gennie. We are in the process of installing the infrastructure; including a 2,000 gallon underground diesel tank. Will provide approximately 40A of 118Vac power to each of the 31 homes in complex.

-- hiding in plain (sight@edge of.nowhere), January 15, 2000.

Folks:

Things are different where I live. As I reported in this forum last Feb., my supplier provided me with extensive information about what they they had tested and replaced. I believe Ray's response was something like, "Sure Z but other power companies aren't doing this". Since turnover, we haven't had any change in voltage. No fluctuations at all. I guess that they were telling the truth. Of course past experience has no real predictive value. Will have to wait and see.

Best wishes,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), January 15, 2000.

Hello all, I've read your posts. Before I comment on them, I want Mr. Cook to settle our wager first. He said to go ahead and post, and Chuck R. kindly contacted him as well. I am not sure why he hasn't posted...he had a family illness recently and also was supposed to be at some sort of Y2k event in his home town. If I don't hear from him over the weekend, then I'll have to re-contact him and we'll start over next week. I apologize for the wait...

Regarding the issue of whether there are power outages, brownouts, blackouts, dirty power etc. as a result of Y2k, I will probably start a new thread in the next few days, as I think it would be a good separate discussion. (Hint: There is no doubt that I won the wager.)

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), January 15, 2000.

Dan -- I'm overjoyed you won and I'm sure Robert is too. I also appreciate your spirit the whole way through, which was so utterly different than "Fact-Finder's" (sic).

I hope all the other polly expectations about Y2K hold for the so-far mainly "silent re-entry" period between now and May 1.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 15, 2000.

Hiding in plain sight wrote

Yesterday, like most days since rollover, the voltage was all over the place. 'Normally,' the voltage at the outlet is between 118 and 121 Vac. We have been getting anywhere between 112 and 125 Vac ... at times, seeing as much as 10 volt changes within a few seconds.

Since rollover, we also experienced a week or so of frequency stability problems, measured with both a frequency counter AND an oscilloscope at between 45 and 70 Hz ... normally 60 +/- 1 Hz.

Well Hiding,I would strongly suggest that you get both you oscilloscope and your frequency counter checked, as what you have described here is not physically possible.

Certainly the frequency can move around under certain undesirable cicumstances, but the frequency must remain the same irrespective of where it is measured on the grid. It cannot be 60 Hz at a generation site but be at some other figure at your house. If there is a small frequency swing, free governor action at the power stations will rapidly correct it and bring it back to normal, however on a large swing there are frequency protection relays at the power stations which will trip the generators off line at around 56 Hz. As each generator trips off the frequency will dive further causing any others generators to trip also in a designed cascade failure which will black out the grid. By the frequency falls below 55 Hz, the grid is already dead.

Should something happen to make the frequency go high, the again free governor action will close the turbine's inlets down to reduce the generators speed back to 60 Hz. In the highly unlikely event that the frequency does go above 64 Hz, the an overspeed device will trip the turbine off load. (once again this is for generator protection).

Normal governor action will maintain frequency at 59.8 to 60.2 Hz without any protectective devices or control inputs at all.

So it is not physically possible for the frequency to go outside the limits of 56 Hz to 64 Hz, and even with control failures would still be unlikely to be outside 59.8 to 60.2 Hz.

The voltage swings that you mention though are quite possible. Th international standard for maintaining voltage is Nominal Voltage +/- 5%. However I understand that USA has its own standard rather than the international one, and does allow swings of up to 10% under some circumstances. So anywhere from 114 V to 126 V should be considered completely normal, but I would start to ask questions if it ever dropped as low as 108 V or as high as 132 V.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), January 15, 2000.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Just curious. What state, county, or city/town do you live in? ...sdb

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), January 15, 2000.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Also, what kind of power plant supplies your power? Coal fired, hydro-electric, nuclear? ...thank you, sdb

-- S. David Bays (SDBAYS@prodigy.net), January 15, 2000.

///

-- Please (keep@the.top), January 16, 2000.

Ah - the beauty of the written words....I'd like to thank everybody fot the comments above - certainly didn't expect the number of responses received in this short time.

With respect to the orginal wager - I'm very pleased with the resiliency of the power systems nationally - and won't quibble or the specific as of the number of people affected. Most certainly, power remained up for the turnover - thus letting most of the remaining systems remain operational. I expected much worse - perhaps as much as 1/4 - 1/5 the nation losing power for irregular periods over the next few days. Clearly, that many areas did not fail.

Very fortunately - even a blip at midnight at one place (Times Square) could have panicked the crowd, leading to numerous deaths in the resulting crowded (and potential crushing pressure) if people began stampeding in the darkness. Towards midnight, the crowd, the media, the politicans were clearly trusting absolutely in their hope that power (and other services) would remain up. Mentally, by 00:00 GMT, and later at midnight EST, nobody was "ready" for problems.

Off-screen, we perhaps may never know what the feeling was in the various command centers, emergency response centers, and the like.

But - the system(s) stayed up. For this I aknowledge the work done by the experts within the power industry, and thank them for their professionalism. The specific prediction made by Dan was correct in general principle - power stayed up (though I have no numbers to to backup the personal observations made above about local flucuations in voltage/frequency. I don't monitor frequency here, and only irregularly check voltage - so I've nothing locally to say "Aye" or Nay" from.)

Water too.

---...---...

Now, I've got to figure out why my expected electric bill (due 12/23/99) was not billed to my bank account as it should have been. But it might be okay in the long run: my January 25th bill from the power company is for 67 days of power.......

And they read my water meter wrong too on December 19.....

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 16, 2000.

Robert, thanks for finding the thread and posting. As per our wager, you need to put the following words in your next post on this thread.

"I, Robert Cook, was obviously clueless as to the problems with power and Y2k. I most humbly apologize to this forum for either inadvertently or purposefully misleading people."

Please do this so that our wager can be considered settled. Thanks.

-- Dan the Power Man (dgman19938@aol.com), January 16, 2000.

Malcolm - could be that my timebase is faulty as well ... the o'scope is an old surplus Tek 460A, the freq counter is a plug in for same. First chance I get, I will do a external standard-based calibration sequence ... if find problem will advise here if thread is still running.

Thanks for the tech info - altho spent 18 years as an EE in the electronics world, I have very limited experience with power co operations. Twas were I got the electricity to run my equipment! :-)

SDB- Western WY, local power is from a small local hydro plant.

More general info: Talked to local master electrician earlier this morning ... was told that during last few weeks, the power in area has been very dirty - seems the oil fields are gearing up; extraordinarily heavy use of very large electrical equipment which is reeking havoc on the local grid.

This state has no heavy industry to speak of - so according to him - there are not as many filters on the line as in other places. Says that has not been a problem in past. Suggested I either buy a large powerline conditioner or contact the utility co to see what they can do to help.

-- hiding in plain (sight@edge of.nowhere), January 16, 2000.