I read in the UK press that the US is experiencing power shortages not due to y2k failure but a massive increase in demand in certain areas (silly valley etc). You're all buying more and more PCs it seems.

Is this true, there was mention of companies building their own power stations.

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), July 12, 2000

Answers

Summer Power Shortage - Energy Secretary Bill Richardson: if problems are not addressed, ``we'll all end up sitting in the dark.''

(July 5)

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003RiS

-- (a@recent.thread), July 12, 2000.

The Northwest, California, and the New England area are the most likely parts of the country to be in danger.

-- Butt Nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), July 12, 2000.

You should be careful about believing all that's being written about power shortages in the US. We didn't suddenly have a huge year to year increase in demand or loss of capacity. In fact, there is still excess capacity in the system and that will continue to build as businesses as homes continue the switch to energy saving appliances and lighting.

What's really happening is that utilities want to replace older, less efficient plants with newer, more efficient plants. This is usually a decade long process with the public and environmentalists over any number of thorny issues. One of the ways to speed this up is to create a crisis, just the way that Y2K was used for a number of purposes unrelated to the actual event. I think this is responsible for the upsurge of stories about a power "crisis", even from the Secretary of Energy, whose job, you must remember, is to insure the production of energy.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), July 12, 2000.