For the past several months, I've been reading everything I could get my hands on regarding Y2K. It's clear to me that there is no silver bullet and that it truly is far too late to fix everything. It is also clear that with each passing day, the potential danger becomes greater.

(Side note: For anyone who needs a 'quick' executive overview of the scope and depth of the problem, I highly recommend watching C-SPAN's coverage of "Year 2000 Computer Problems" held June 2, 1998 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Tapes of the 3-hour session can be purchased from C-SPAN's web site and although they are a bit pricey ($90), it is money well spent. )

I have come to the conclusion that while numerous serious (indeed catastophic) failures of mission critical systems are now inevitable at this late date, the single most important piece of this puzzle is the power industry. Letting power fail is simply not an option.

The social consequences are staggering. If major sections of the grid go down and stay down for more than 'a short period' (pick your own number here), then full recovery will not be likely to occur within our own lifetimes (again, pick your own number).

With this in mind, would it help if we, as individuals, companies and organizations dramatically reduced our power consumption during the critical period - perhaps during the 3 months preceeding and the 3 months following Jan 1, 2000? (choose your own window)

I'm not arguing that this 'fixes' Y2K or that other problems will not occur. This ignores, for the moment, the problems which are known to exist in the power distribution system. But if we could reduce our demand by 'a significant amount' (yep, your number again), would that reduce the likelyhood of a collapse of the entire grid? Couldn't many more individual plants 'trip off' without killing the whole machine? Is this just wishful thinking or might such an effort actually help avert an even worse scenario?

I'm obviously not an expert in the power generation/distribution system but clearly, if we have power, we stand a much better chance of responding to other events. Without power, we may not even get a chance to try. I don't play poker but I'd sure think that a few months of reduced consumption would beat a cold Smith & Wesson hands down.

Paddling like crazy and grasping for anything that floats,

Arnie

-- Arnie Rimmer (arnie_rimmer@usa.ner), October 04, 1998

Answers

An interesting idea, however, individual consumers do not use the bulk of the electrical power from what I understand, it is industrial uses. If there were a controlled staggered re-start of the corporations who use massive amounts of electricity after a 1 week corporate holiday for the first week of 2000, then that might actually help reduce the shock to the system if there is anough capacity to power our homes. Assuming of course that enough pawer companies are running at that point.

We definitely need to stop this ball dropping nonsense in times square - what a disaster waiting to happen! Stay home people!

-- Brad Waddell (lists@flexquarters.com), October 04, 1998.

Arne, if power could somehow be stored like food and water, your suggestion would have serious merit. But, as I understand it, electical power is the ultimate JIT (just in time) commodity. It is used the moment it is generated and in the exact amount.

Brad, it is not inconceivable that, owing to current economic trends coupled with Y2K "look-ahead" problems in 99, manufacturing will be in decline as parts of the supply chain go bankrupt. Not that it's a self-correcting problem, but a good (un)healthy depression will go a long way towards curtailing power consumption.

Hallyx

"In this day and age, if you're not confused, you're not thinking clearly." ---Burt Mannis

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), October 04, 1998.

Reduced consumption might be an option on the generation side, if the power companies concentrated on fixing a limited number of plants in some sort of a "conservation of technical Y2K resources" type plan. However, this would require them to admit that some of their plants would fail, which I doubt they will ever do. "IF" they did, then mandatory conservation could be enforced, and would certainly include business customers. Brad is right, they're the big consumers of electricity.

The whole problem with this idea is that it only addresses the production of electricity, not the distribution or delivery of power. If parts of these systems are non-compliant, production and consumption levels mean nothing, especially to the areas without power.

Arnie: Everyone who studies the Y2K problem eventually comes to the same conclusion here. Electricity is the key. With it, we can limp along, without it, we are in trouble.

In reality, the other two sides of the "Iron Triangle" are equally important. If communication is lost, or banks begin to fail in large numbers, the results could be devastating as well. The difference is that they would be less immediate, and probably less deadly.

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), October 04, 1998.

Without da juice

All hell breaks loose

If we keep 'em runnin'

Less reason for gunnin'

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), October 04, 1998.

I work as a power system operator. My response is that it would certainly help if there was massive conservation. What happens now when a utility experiences shortages of generation, usually during high load periods associated with weather extremes? They first reduce loads that are "interruptible" or pay lower rates for having this distinction, then they ask large consumers to curtail voluntarily, then they make public appeals to the average consumer to reduce usage, finally they drop loads manually or automatically. We would be much better off, with more reserves if the load reductions were done ahead of time.

This wouldn't solve all possible problems but would help. I expect the public appeals will be heard on the media ahead of time if utilities begin to understand the situation will be bad.

-- System Operator (awake@theswitch.com), October 04, 1998.

S.O.:

"We would be much better off, with more reserves if the load reductions were done ahead of time."

Reserves, as in "reserve capacity", correct? Aren't the power companies already relying on the fact that the rollover is on a holiday weekend, knowing there will be reduced demand? How much reserve capacity will we need? Rick Cowles is pushing contingency planning for the electric power industry. I wonder if this includes telling all their customers that the lights might go out... Any inside information on that?

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), October 04, 1998.

Where Arnie's sidenote about the C-SPAN video is concerned; that conference is archived in RealVideo format at http://www.bog.fr b.fed.us/y2k/video_index.htm, about halfway down the page. Can watch for free!

RealPlayer 5.0 or better needed for viewing; there's a download link at the top of the page, for those who don't have it.

The written transcript of that conference is also available at http://www.csis.org/html/ y2ktran.html.

-- John Howard (Greenville, NC) (pcdir@prodigy.net), October 04, 1998.

John: Thanks for posting the additional info on the C-SPAN coverage of the CSIS conference. I would have still purchased the tapes (to show to my non-wired friends) but was not aware of the resources you pointed folks to. Every little bit helps.

Arnie

-- Arnie Rimmer (arnie_rimmer@usa.net), October 04, 1998.

This great granny is not a "techie" of any sort, and your various posts have me confused. How will conservation help if the computers are not working at all, and everything is completely shut down???? Are you refering to some kind of manual operation? I know that the dams that supply Seattle City Light, Ross and Diablo, are manually operated; I was there on a tour last month and the manager so informed me. Therefore, Seattle should be o.k. But Tacoma, where I live, gets its power from a dam that is automated, according to the Ross/Diablo manager. I assume that means "computers." I believe it's an "either or" situation...if manually operated, power will continue; if computer operated, well--you know....

-- Holly Allen (Holly3325@juno.com), October 04, 1998.

Arnie, it would definitely help. The generating plants will generate as much power as is required. Many can generate more, called 'spinning reserves' because the generators are up and spinning, but not being loaded or placed on line.

At rollover, as some plants go down, the grid is asked to take up the slack by picking up more power from other generators. If there's excess capacity at that time, a lot of problems are solved: the grid doesn't go down due to overload.

The larger the amount of surplus power, the more failures can be tolerated.

BTW, this works the other way, too: if the load were dropped suddenly, that would cause a lot of problems, so if the load is disconnected ahead of time a lot of surge and problems caused by surge can be eliminated.

Now, this doesn't cure distribution problems, only the supply/demand problem.

And, it only works if enough power can be generated after midnight to take care of the demand.

Since the holiday is on a weekend, the industry has a couple of days to recuperate from the January 1 rollover before serious load is used.

Expect that the first contingency plan will be shedding of all possible load and the startup of as much spinning reserve as practical.

-- rocky knolls (rknolls@hotmail.com), October 04, 1998.

You must be too young to remember the power troubles the US had in the early to mid 70's. The govt stepped in and mandated that industry had to run at 80% power levels. This was shortly dropped, due to the fact that much industry can't shut down part of an operation - if my memory serves - TI was the only chip fabricator at the time - just SSI chips - and they shut down altogether rather than try to make any changes in the way the plant ran. Many others did the same. So we had rolling brown-outs through all the big cities for several years. You might want to look into a gadget they had at the time that would boost the voltage back up to acceptable levels - its either that or get a UPS.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), October 06, 1998.