Utilities take Y2K seriously

Utility operators confident power companies will be ready for year 2000

To hear it from some quarters, the 2000 New Year’s Eve party will be punctuated by the sight of the big ball in Times Square blinking out “along with every other light in the country” due to the Millennium Bug.

The computer glitch, which mistakes the year 2000 for 1900 because many computers read only the last two digits of the year, is supposed to cause all sorts of problems when calendars roll over to Jan. 1.

Depending on whom you talk to, those problems will range from not getting a Social Security check on time to catastrophic power blackouts. Utility companies, including locals Platte River Power Authority and Poudre Valley REA, can1t say about the Social Security checks, but they’re pretty confident the lights will stay on when champagne corks start popping.

“It would be a problem if the other utilities around us were not taking it seriously,´ said Michael Dahl, division manager for power systems operations at PRPA, “but we have been.”

Ron Carey, general manager of Poudre Valley REA, said computers at the utility’s Fort Collins headquarters were reviewed and tested more than a year ago.

“The worst thing we found was that the computer for our heating and air-conditioning system was not compliant, which wouldn’t have affected our customers,” he said. “Most of our programming here was developed inhouse, and we were just compliant. For the most part they programmed it for four digits. There was nothing in billing, metering or systems projection. Operations is the same way.”

Carey said it was about the same for the company’s power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc. “They have found very few (problems),” he said. “There were some emissions-control systems that weren’t compliant.”

Jeff Hertz, Year 2000 coordinator for Larimer County, said he met with representatives from PRPA, Tri-State, Poudre Valley REA and others dealing with the computer problem in the utilities industry in January.

“The consensus is that it is not going to be a problem,” Hertz said. “They have been busy with it for four years.”

Dahl said PRPA has had a Relay Work Group checking the company’s system for the last three years to make sure the utility company does not have a Y2K problem.

“We are in the process of replacing the computer system that controls our substations, and by the end of March, we will finish replacing it,” Dahl said.

Dahl clarified that the U.S. electric industry (commonly referred to as the grid) is not monolithic but composed of three separate parts. One services the eastern portion of the United States, a second services the western part and a third services Texas.

“There will be a test in April of the western grid to see if there are any glitches in the system,” he said.

According to the National Electric Reliability Council, a nonprofit corporation formed in 1968 to aid utilities with systemwide problems, a little more than 44 percent of systems critical to electric power production and distribution have been made Y2K ready as of Nov. 30, 1998. Most electrical facilities will complete remediation and testing by the end of June.

According to NERC, 42 percent of nonnuclear generation plants were Y2K ready at the end of November 1998, along with 31 percent of nuclear generation systems, 48 percent of energy management systems, 48 percent of telecommunications systems, 53 percent of substation controls and system protection, and 56 percent of distribution systems.

Despite this progress, Carey and Dahl say a day rarely goes by without customer queries about the Millennium Bug and what it might do to the power. Dahl frequently attends meetings such as the one held Dec. 10 at the Lincoln Center. A group of 300 quizzed him persistently about the problem, most of them uneasy because Dahl refused to assure them that ‘nothing would happen’ Jan. 1.

Dahl said that was due to the fact that utilities do expect some problems. In such a huge system, the power goes off all the time. What utilities are good at is fixing problems.

“Rawhide (PRPA1s primary power-generation plant) went down last week,” Dahl said. “You didn’t notice it because we get power from other sources. We get power from a hydroelectric station, and we own part of a power plant in Craig. All of this has been done to ensure delivery of power to customers.”

“It1s really hard to understand where people are coming from who think the grid will shut down permanently or for long periods of time,” Carey added, “who think there won’t be any drinking water, there won’t be food and planes will fall out of the sky. It’s irrational. Sure, there are going to be some problems, but I think it’s completely irrational to think that it will impact large groups of people.”

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