As, always, . . . Om K -----
Subj: Two VERY SERIOUS Articles Re The POWER GRID: MUST READS! Date: 99-01-08 14:54:10 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hammell) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IAHF LIST: I just read the 80 page report of the North American Reliability Council (NERC) which submitted a report to the US Dept. of Energy entitled "Preparing the Electrical Power Systems of N.America for Transition to the Year 2000" I've also read Roleigh Martin's carefully considered criticisms of this report which can be found in two "MUST READ" articles that the site won't let you cut and paste due to how its formatted. Having read the NERC report and Martin's criticisms, I am even MORE glad that I'm actively preparing to get entirely clear of Miami. For: 1) How Confidant Are We Now That We Will Have Electrical Power in 2000? Go to: http://www.y2ktoday.com/modules/home/default.asp?id=372&feature=&type= Also read: 2) "Critical But Peripheral Issues With the NERC Report" Also by Roleigh Martin http://www.y2ktoday.com/modules/home/default.asp?feature=true&id=484 You can get to the NERC report off a link from these articles. You will need Acrobat reader to view. It can be downloaded for free if you don't already have it. ************************************************************** IAHF website maintained by webmaster, Jan Rosenstreich, Mystic Gateway Holistic Center - http://www.castle.net/~mystic/ Donations needed for trips to Washington to Secure Congressional Oversight Hearing: IAHF 2411 Monroe St. Hollywood, FL 33020 USA 800-333-2553, 954-929-0507 fax, http://www.iahf.com,[EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================ Roleigh Martin: How Confident Are We Now That We Will Have Electricity in 2000? 10/1/98 Author: Roleigh Martin On August 17, 1998, the North American Reliability Council (NERC) submitted a report to the U.S. Department of Energy, entitled "Preparing the Electric Power Systems of North America for Transition to the Year 2000: A Status Report and Work Plan." Reviews of the NERC report have been made by Rick Cowles, Dick Mills and Sheri L. Garris. I personally did not find any additional items of encouragement from the report, so you will have to read these other reviews to hear their few words of praise. If one only researches Y2K by talking to Y2K project managers or Y2K public relation officials, one is led to believe that, for the most part, there will be no problems. However, the track record of finished large scale projects by government and corporate entities leads me to believe there is no justification in accepting the conclusion that there will be no major problems. Those who have this attitude should read the Y2K books of Capers Jones and Ed Yourdon, two of the best known project management analysts in Information Technology history. I want everyone to think back to their own days in school. We all can remember the mandatory deadlines for turning in tough assignments. These deadlines often resulted in people turning in poorly done assignments that were given too little time and attention. Just because everyone turned in the assignment on time, does not mean that everyone received a passing grade. When we hear Y2K utility project managers give their project presentations at legislative or Public Utility Commission hearings what they essentially are telling us is "how far are we are on our homework." Not one of the utilities in any of the hearings I have attended have told the audience how well they are being graded by a teacher (an outside consultant whose job it is to grade them). We all know that in international testing, Americans are notorious for over-rating their test successes as they leave the testing room. Nevertheless, self-grading does not make a utility a Y2k success. We are 100 percent in the dark as to how well any of our utilities are doing from a teacher's scoring standpoint. The Most Blatant Alarm Raised In The NERC Report Across the board, the project managers have started late, if at all, on the Y2k problem. The utility industry is outrageously, poorly managed. We all know how to count to 2000, yet the utility industry has abandoned Y2K compliancy, and are instead going for Y2K readiness. (see the latest North American Reliability Council (NERC) Y2K report According to page 25 in the NERC report: "Y2K Ready means a system or component has been determined to be suitable for continued use into the Year 2000. Note that this is not necessarily the same as Y2K Compliant, which implies fully correct date manipulations. Consistent with practices across other industries, the NERC assessment process has adopted the term Y2K Ready and does not use the term Y2K Compliant." ================================= Peripheral but Critical Issues with the NERC Report 11/2/98 Author: Roleigh Martin Missing from the NERC report are examples of failures that have occurred in some power plants which have performed integrated plant-wide system simulation of Year 2000 tests. Also missing are typical cost reasons why the electric utility industry did not choose to go with the Y2K compliancy option. Two paragraphs from the anonymous source I quoted in the Year/2000 Journal article and in Westergaard Year 2000 suggest how significant such information would be. These paragraphs are from a utility insider who attended a state- wide session on Y2K and embedded systems in electric utilities in a Mid-West state in 1997. I have confirmed most of what this individual relayed to me via email correspondence with others who also attended that session. He reported that a leading electric utility engineering firm official and a leading Y2K expert with a leading electric utility industry group told the utilities the following: In the testing of two coal-fire power plants (which were currently offline and being used as "hot spares") for year 2000 compliance, the clocks were simultaneously rolled over to the year 2000, causing immediate plant failure. In an attempt to better understand the failure, the roll over test was repeated. In the second test, the plants again failed, but a different embedded controller was determined to be at fault. The roll over test was repeated a third time in hopes of replicating one of the previous failures. In this test, the plants failed from yet a different embedded controller. It was determined that this last failure would have caused a grid-wide failure had the plants been online. It took 13 days in order to restore the plants to working condition from the last failure. OFF THE RECORD: The discussions that took place in the meetings really scared the hell out of me. It seems that the power utilities that have not yet recognized the embedded systems problems are already too late. It was said to take about 21 months and $30-40 mil to make one generation plant compliant. The utility companies at this meeting expressed the opinion that compliance would not be possible due to budgetary and time constraints. "The only thing we can be certain about the year 2000 is that we won't be able to fix everything." The opinion was expressed that complete Y2K remediation is an insurmountable task, therefore utilities should just attempt to make the steps necessary to prove due diligence in the court of law. According to this official, the money that all utilities report they are spending for Y2K is outrageously low. The problem is that the current tax accounting laws encourage the utilities to only publicize their software Y2K budget --because those costs have to be expensed out in that year, not depreciated over many years. Thus many utilities who are trying to be diligent are reportedly lumping the bulk of their Y2K equipment replacement and/or upgrade expenditures into normal equipment upgrade costs. Consequently, this data is hidden amongst non-Y2K costs and neither the public nor the regulators can distinguish if they are doing a first class job or a really cheapskate, risky one. I've talked with both Y2K tax attorneys and managers at utility companies and I know this is happening, to my great frustration. I have also been told by managers working inside these utilities that they do not want their shareholders to panic over the full amount of money they are spending on Y2K upgrades. Personally, I would think educated shareholders would be more willing to hold onto their utility stock during the Y2K crisis if they knew the utilities were spending more on the problem, but apparently the utilities feel otherwise. Consequently, it is impossible for an outside Y2K expert to grade these utilities on the quality of their Y2K work simply by reading their SEC reports and by hearing their Y2K presentations. Most of us studying the Y2K utility problem are totally in the dark and that includes the regulators. How frustrating! I do know that some utilities are reportedly taking a FOF approach (Fix On Failure) and that really concerns me due to the 13 day downtime incident illustrated above. (Yes, I've had a few Y2K utility project insiders write me and tell me the management is engaged in type testing or plan to include use of the FOF approach. This might actually be acceptable for non-mission critical equipment, but one Y2K project manager felt too much was being excluded from testing at his company.) Other Articles by Roleigh Martin: Contrasting the NERC Report: National and Local Perspectives, Part II Contrasting the NERC Report: National and Local Perspectives, Part I Utilities and System Testing: Where Are They Now? How Confident Are We Now That We Will Have Electricity in 2000?
