Here's a report I received via an e-mail list. Has anyone else seen this? What do you think?

------------ The World Energy Conference: Houston

I'd been looking forward to the big World Energy Conference, which Houston hosted Sept. 14-18. With 130 nations present, it would be a good place to see how the rest of the world was doing with fixing their computers and embedded systems for their utilities - or so I thought.

I got my conference materials and began looking for the seminars on the problem and couldn't find any. Then I checked the white papers submitted to the conference. There were about 250 papers presented on almost every conceivable topic including nuclear fusion and methane hydrides on the ocean floor but there was nothing about the year 2000 problem.

I went down to the vendor exhibits to see if there was a different story there. EPRI (Electrical Power Research Institute) was there and handed me the only Year 2000 brochure I found on the whole vendor floor. The only energy problem these people seemed to be interested in was the low price of oil. Except for one notable exception, the year 2000 was not an issue, not even a footnote, at the World Energy Conference.

The one exception was the release of the NERC report on the state of U.S. electric utilities. (NERC stands for North American Electric Reliability Council and includes the area of Canada and a little of Mexico.) The report is generally optimistic about the status of the electrical utilities in North America and their ability to deal with the year 2000 problem. It was announced at the conference on Thursday morning by Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Moler, along with a panel of people representing every aspect of the electrical industry. At the same time, it was put on NERC's website as an 88-page pdf document, which you can download at

http://www.nerc.com.

An outline of the report was discussed and the panel answered questions from an audience I estimated at 75 to 150 people. During the question time several people from the press wanted to know if the level of year 2000 remediation work around the country was uniform and who the laggards were and how could we get them to move a little faster.

After the questions, the meeting ended and the panel went to the pressroom for a briefing. Almost immediately, writers for the news bureaus posted several articles on the report. Since the report was released, several authors have criticized it for being too optimistic and not detailing the reasons for optimism. But the reasons were there. The NERC has responses from 75% of the industry, has measured their progress for two months and based on this can make a prognosis of the speed of the fix. They have concluded that there is enough time left for all utilities to be Y2K ready by June 30, 1999.

"Y2K Ready" the report defines as, "...a system or component (that) has been determined to be suitable for continued use into the year 2000." As of now, 28% of the testing of components has been completed. What they have found is that only 1% to 2% of the devices or components exhibit year 2000 anomalies and few of those devices or components will shut down their system. Also, there aren't thousands or even hundreds of industry operating systems but only dozens.

The NERC did conclude that progress needs to be accelerated, and there was also concern for the 25% of the industry that had not yet responded. In many cases, we were told, this is because their lawyers told them not to respond due to fear of litigation. In fact, it was pointed out by Secretary Moler that the only group to oppose the information sharing bill then before Congress was the Trial Lawyers Association. Michael Gent, President of the NERC, told me one of the most difficult things they were dealing with was getting their findings out to the public. He is hoping their web site will get a lot of traffic.

When they release their next report in December, the NERC will list the companies that have responded. If you don't see your utility there, it might be a good idea to call them up and ask them why, and mention that you read the NERC report. But the industry is more than a quarter finished, the susceptible chip count is low and the failure rate for the systems they are part of is even lower. On top of that, the NERC is making sure there is enough fuel to run the plants, plus a surplus. They are also checking into the Y2K status of the information systems of the utilities so there won't be problems with billing or account management. It should make you feel better that 88% of the Y2K project managers report to a vice president. Executive buy-in is the single most important factor in a successful year 2000 project.

The nuclear plants were in even better shape than the industry as a whole, according to the NERC, taking its information from The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Energy Institute. The nuclear power industry has been working at the fix longer and they are much more highly regulated. It is also harder to change anything in a nuclear plant when it comes to upgrading it. I confirmed this down on the display floor.

I talked to people at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Framatome Technologies, which make and operate the French nuclear reactors. The United States gets about a quarter of its power from nuclear plants, but the French use nuclear power for 70% of their energy needs and have been building reactors all along.

At the AEC booth I was told that our reactors were safe and the French reactors should be safe, too, because they were based on an older, well proven Westinghouse design. The last reactor to come on line in the U.S. started in 1995 with safety and control systems designed 20 years before. The man from the NRC told me they were very conservative when it came to certifying new systems for nuclear power.

In the French exhibit it took me awhile to get to the technician (the woman in charge didn't speak English), but he confirmed what I had been told. The French reactors are of one design that differs only in scale, coming in three output levels. I asked him about embedded logic in the plants and he told me there was almost none, nearly everything was analog. He told me that it was not by plan but rather a fortuitous accident. They had been slow in changing the design of their plants and just hadn't gotten around to upgrading the systems with a lot of embedded logic, when someone realized it would be to everyone's advantage if they put off the upgrades until after 2000.

Surrounded by the opulence of the energy companies' technology and ability helped me remember to keep Y2K in the proper context. It is an important problem but it isn't the only important problem in the world. Fixing it is expensive, estimated to take 44% of the IT budgets for the next year, and while that's a lot of money, for many of these companies it is a lot less money than they spend on other things, such as exploration. I would have felt better if they had spent a little more time and money to tell people what they were doing about the year 2000 problem but other than myself and maybe one or two others, nobody seemed to be asking. The tech people I talked to all knew what their companies were doing about the problem and that everything was on schedule. To the energy industry, Y2K is just another business problem. I was reminded that the tail doesn't wag the dog.

But later that morning at the luncheon, Patrick Wood, the head of the Public Utilities Commission in Texas, told me he thought the report was a whitewash, although he said he didn't know if it was a deep whitewash or just a coat of paint. The situation in Texas is a little different. Most people know we have an Eastern and a Western power grid. But there is also a third grid, called the ERCOT Interconnection, that actually covers most of Texas. Mr. Wood doesn't like what he is hearing from the disparate parts of his grid and is worried about getting them all working together.

Who do you believe, the government, the people in the industry or the consultants? The consultants are claiming you have to find every single last potential problem and test it, which I think may be overkill, even if there was enough time left. But if you hire them and they miss one, guess who is liable? I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but the government has been known to claim things were better than they subsequently turned out to be. I don't know what the situation is in Texas, but I knew some people in other parts of the country and I spent the weekend calling electrical engineers.

What I found was that the NERC report is probably right on the money for most of the country. There is enough time left, and what they are finding is not that disturbing. The people I talked to just aren't finding any problems in chips where the clock function isn't used, and they are finding very few problems with the systems that do use dates. Very soon now someone is going to say out loud that you don't really have to check every chip or system if a hundred others just like it have been checked and nothing has turned up.

Electric people have a lot of experience dealing with outages. A former engineer for Pacificorp told me that when there are five generators in a plant, all are independent of each other so that one or more can be down at any time. If they have identical systems and the first two-test fine, do you really have to test the other three? If time is pressing and if your consultant budget is a little thin and your plant people tell you they have a work-around, you might just put checking those three units on the back burner.

Electric plants are like the railroads. They are old technology. I have checked the RR switches on the main line near me and none of them have chips, just big bronze padlocks, probably the same ones they used when my father was a boy. I could, all by myself, switch a train on a manual or computer-controlled switch in 15 minutes with a sledge hammer. (The switch would continue to be operational, too.) Give me an hour and I could figure out a way to do it without using the hammer. To make a rail switch work you only have to move two rails (designed to be movable) three inches.

Peter de Jager used a similar example at the SPG conference in San Francisco. He asked, "what would you do if you owned a small business and all your mainframe programs died?" Do you just lock the doors? No, you run down to the computer store and buy 50 copies of Quicken and you set up your core functions again. You can be up and taking money in a few hours.

This is why buying a year's worth of food is probably a bad investment unless you're really into camping. The findings that are starting to come out now just don't warrant that level of anxiety. The December report from the NERC and the January look-forward failures will give us a much better picture of where we really stand.

Best practices, Jon Huntress jon@year2000.com

The Year 2000 Information Center http://www.year2000.com

This coverage is Copyright 1998 Year2000.com Partnership

-- Libby Alexander (libbyalex@aol.com), October 18, 1998

Answers

What do I think?

I think this is one of the most rational, thoughtful, and thorough investigations of the grid I've read. The author of this calm, investigate, first-hand report has done us all a great favor by injecting reason and facts into an increasingly frenzied debate whose one dominant note seems to be a particularly nasty brand of fear, to wit, I'll get mine, and to H with all the rest of you.

Thanks very much for posting it. We needed this antidote.

-- Jeffry Lichten (Jef2870a3@halcyon.com), October 18, 1998.

sorry, this is a long post... and it's the response to this "report" from Rick Cowles posted on his site at euy2k.com in the forum area at: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000CU8

______________________________________________________________________

All,

The following is my reply to Jon Huntress' recent mailing to the Year2000.com Announcement List (from year2000.com) regarding the recent World Energy Conference. Jon's entire report is not reproduced here, but you can view it on the CBN Y2k website at: http://www.cbn.org/y2k/insights.asp?file=981016d.htm

--- Jon,

Given the subject of your recent mailing, I was obviously interested in your personal take on the World Energy Conference. After reading your report, I was somewhat dismayed.

I was dismayed by two things: the inaccuracies in the report, and your apparent acceptance of the information given to you verbatim. My comments follow.

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 08:35:37 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:

>Year2000.com Announcement List, Special Mailing, >October 16, 1998

>After the questions, the meeting ended and the panel went to >the pressroom for a briefing. Almost immediately, writers for >the news bureaus posted several articles on the report. Since >the report was released, several authors have criticized it >for being too optimistic and not detailing the reasons for >optimism. But the reasons were there.

You make the statement, "But the reasons were there", and then present a couple of very weak arguments. I provided some very strong arguments for viewing the report as whitewash bullshit, which is exactly what it was. If you haven't seen my rebuttal to the NERC report at y2ktoday.com, I'm attaching a copy of it to this email.

>The NERC has responses >from 75% of the industry, has measured their progress for two >months and based on this can make a prognosis of the speed >of the fix.

75%, Jon. You've been dealing with Y2k for quite awhile. Let that number roll off of your tongue. It's October, 1998.

>They have concluded that there is enough time >left for all utilities to be Y2K ready by June 30, 1999.

The report did NOT conclude this. The report reiterated NERC's deadline, and said it was and aggressive goal. "Aggressive" is an understatement.

>"Y2K Ready" the report defines as, "...a system or component >(that) has been determined to be suitable for continued use >into the year 2000." As of now, 28% of the testing of >components has been completed. What they have found is that >only 1% to 2% of the devices or components exhibit year 2000 >anomalies and few of those devices or components will shut >down their system. Also, there aren't thousands or even >hundreds of industry operating systems but only dozens.

First, I didn't find this anywhere in the report (other than the 28% figure). Second, if the industry is only finding 1 to 2 percent of the devices having "Year 2000 anomalies", why does my company's database, with over 50K discrete components and control systems cataloged, find an "anomaly" rate of 15 to 20%, with about 5% being showstoppers? Third, while you (or NERC) are probably right about "dozens of operating systems", consider that there are only a few dozen major operating systems - Windows 95/98, Unix, MVS, DOS, VMS, etc. etc. This paragraph belies a fundamental misunderstanding, on your part, of the nature of the problem. The O/S's for mainframes, networks, and desktops are not necessarily the issue (but in some cases are, for older versions). It's the programs behind the operating systems!

>The NERC did conclude that progress needs to be accelerated, >and there was also concern for the 25% of the industry that >had not yet responded. In many cases, we were told, this is >because their lawyers told them not to respond due to fear of >litigation.

And you believed this?

>When they release their next report in December, the NERC >will list the companies that have responded. If you don't see >your utility there, it might be a good idea to call them up >and ask them why, and mention that you read the NERC report. >But the industry is more than a quarter finished, the >susceptible chip count is low and the failure rate for the >systems they are part of is even lower.

Read this paragraph again. "the industry is more than a quarter finished..." Jon, again, it's October, 1998. Not October, 1996. I'm a 'glass half full' type of guy, Jon, but in this case, the glass is 3/4 empty.

>The nuclear plants were in even better shape than the >industry as a whole, according to the NERC, taking its >information from The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the >Nuclear Energy Institute. The nuclear power industry has >been working at the fix longer and they are much more highly >regulated. It is also harder to change anything in a nuclear >plant when it comes to upgrading it. I confirmed this down >on the display floor.

>I talked to people at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and >Framatome Technologies, which make and operate the French >nuclear reactors.

The A.E.C. was replaced in the 1970's by the NRC. There is no A.E.C. There is a Canadian AECL - perhaps that's what you were alluding to.

>The United States gets about a quarter of >its power from nuclear plants, but the French use nuclear >power for 70% of their energy needs and have been building >reactors all along. > >At the AEC booth I was told that our reactors were safe and >the French reactors should be safe, too, because they were >based on an older, well proven Westinghouse design.

This might be just a poorly worded paragraph. 50% or so of U.S. plants are Westinghouse design (PWR's). 40% are General Electric BWR's. The remaining 10% are B&W or CE PWR design. Frammatome is a quasi-governmental architectural / engineering design agency in France that used the basic 2 and 4 loop Westinghouse PWR designs in all of their plants. French plants are standardized, to a large degree. Not so in the U.S. Every plant in the U.S. is like a fingerprint - no two are alike. This is because of two things: the demographics of the age of the U.S. nuclear plant fleet, and the number of architectural / engineering firms that implemented the aforementioned designs. The above paragraph gives the impression that all U.S. reactors are safe because they are based on an older, well proven Westinghouse design. So was Three Mile Island. Design of the plants, plant operating characteristics, or 'safe shutdown systems' have nothing to do with the Y2k problem. And that seems to be what everyone in the industry is to be blindly focusing on. Process monitoring and control, and event logging have *everything* to do with the Y2k problem in the nuclear industry. You, of all people, should know this, Jon. Last word on nuclear power: The NRC just released the results of its first Y2k audit of a nuclear facility, the Monticello plant in Minnesota. Monticello just kicked off a formal Y2k program in July, 1998. But the NRC, again, is "cautiously optimistic" that Monticello can make the NRC's deadline of June, 1999. Again, I'll let you figure this one out.

>But later that morning at the luncheon, Patrick Wood, the >head of the Public Utilities Commission in Texas, told me he >thought the report was a whitewash, although he said he >didn't know if it was a deep whitewash or just a coat of >paint. The situation in Texas is a little different. Most >people know we have an Eastern and a Western power grid. But >there is also a third grid, called the ERCOT Interconnection, >that actually covers most of Texas. Mr. Wood doesn't like >what he is hearing from the disparate parts of his grid and >is worried about getting them all working together. > >Who do you believe, the government, the people in the >industry or the consultants?

I'll ask two simple questions and let you ponder the answers: who has more expertise at working with the problem? Which group is focusing specifically on what the problem is all about about? You said it best in a previous paragraph: this is merely another business issue to this industry (and a business issue that they, for the most part, haven't got much of a clue on how to deal with).

>What I found was that the NERC report is probably right on >the money for most of the country. There is enough time left, >and what they are finding is not that disturbing. The people >I talked to just aren't finding any problems in chips where >the clock function isn't used, and they are finding very few >problems with the systems that do use dates. Very soon now >someone is going to say out loud that you don't really have >to check every chip or system if a hundred others just like >it have been checked and nothing has turned up. > >Electric people have a lot of experience dealing with >outages. A former engineer for Pacificorp told me that when >there are five generators in a plant, all are independent of >each other so that one or more can be down at any time. If >they have identical systems and the first two-test fine, do >you really have to test the other three? If time is pressing >and if your consultant budget is a little thin and your plant >people tell you they have a work-around, you might just put >checking those three units on the back burner. > >Electric plants are like the railroads. They are old >technology. I have checked the RR switches on the main line >near me and none of them have chips, just big bronze padlocks, >probably the same ones they used when my father was a boy. >I could, all by myself, switch a train on a manual or >computer-controlled switch in 15 minutes with a sledge hammer. >(The switch would continue to be operational, too.) Give me >an hour and I could figure out a way to do it without using >the hammer. To make a rail switch work you only have to move >two rails (designed to be movable) three inches. > >Peter de Jager used a similar example at the SPG conference >in San Francisco. He asked, "what would you do if you owned a >small business and all your mainframe programs died?" Do you >just lock the doors? No, you run down to the computer store >and buy 50 copies of Quicken and you set up your core >functions again. You can be up and taking money in a few >hours. > >This is why buying a year's worth of food is probably a bad >investment unless you're really into camping. The findings >that are starting to come out now just don't warrant that >level of anxiety. The December report from the NERC and the >January look-forward failures will give us a much better >picture of where we really stand.

I can't even bring myself to dissect the above five paragraphs.

Jon, I am really distressed by the last few paragraphs in your report. I'm distressed for a variety of reasons. This is the most non-critical and non-researched view of the Y2k issue I've ever read, and I am truly surprised that it made the cut with Cliff and Peter.

1. You apparently bought the industry party line, hook, line and sinker, with absolutely no critical analysis of the information presented to you.

2. It's very clear to me that you don't understand the Y2k issues in the electric industry, or in fact the industry itself, and so you reported the hook, line, and sinker. I've also come to the conclusion that, even with your background at Tenagra over the past year or so, that you fundamentally don't understand the Y2k problem (or you've been "Charlie Reubenized"). You were clearly out of your depth in reporting on this conference.

3. In the last paragraph in the report, you flippantly told people that personal advance Y2k preparations are a waste of time and money. Your article, posted on the year2000.com, and via the year2000.com mail list, reaches hundreds of thousands of decision makers, and individuals like myself. Now, I'm most assuredly not one of the 'apocalyptic' doomsayers - but I'm responsible enough to tell people that, given the nature of the issue, that some low cost, advance preparation for some lifestyle disruptions (no matter how remote the possibility), just makes sense.

Given the powerful podium that you speak from on the Y2k issue (year2000.com), I expect critical thinking and justification for significant optimism such as written in your report. If there's a reason for optimism, then support it with some independent verification of your own. Your report did a major disservice to the cause, as a whole.

...Rick Cowles (rcowles@waterw.com) on October 17, 1998. _____________________________________________________________________

the NERC report has been disected and examined over and over already, and the overall consensus is that it was a disturbing report, based on the information containe

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 18, 1998.

one quick point

There is an area where I don't think enough time for thought is being spent. That is that even if the power stays on, having food and money set aside is still a good thing.

It is a fact that there will be failures due to Y2k and other economic factors associated with both y2k and the downturn occuring now.

The bottom line is that many people will be forced out of work by the closure of their place of employment, the downsizing of those employers who are trying to stay in business by cutting costs, etc.

You can be without power for reasons other than Y2k power failures. Maybe you just can't pay the bill. You can suffer food disruptions without Y2k. It'll be tough to buy groceries without a paycheck and the social services that exist today may not be available come y2k failures.

So, you can suffer these kinds of disruptions without any direct impact of y2k on specific utilities.

Buying a little insurance, as Ed has said, is an excellent investment in the future. Jon Hunter's last paragraph is a perfect example of a miopic vision into what types of problems might occur. It's also a perfect example of irresponsible reporting from someone who doesn't have a clue.

Mike __________________________________________________________

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 18, 1998.

Thanks, Michael for the rebuttal. Is anyone else suffering from EYS? (emotional yo-yo syndrome) OK, I just made that up, but it does describe the way I feel sometimes.

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 18, 1998.

Good report, good research effort - thanks.

Remember to separate the distribution and control of the power (the grid) from the individual sources of th epower (the plants - includes fossil, natural gas and gas turbines, oil, coal, and cogenerators.)

Each installation will be different, but each is similar to its brothers. Not equal, or you could justify the "test one" instead of "test all". Only identical models, running identical embedded control chips, can be assumed to respond the same way.

The more recent the fossil plant, the more likely it is to be at risk. The more recent the plant, the better the documentation and references, so th eeasier it is to fix. The older plants are a vicious mix of 1920's technology jury-rigged and replaced over the years, combined with very recent new control and sensors to try to improve efficiency and reduce emissions.

So its probably a trade-off. Bottom line: we don't know yet. I don't think the report itself is a deliberate white-wash, but it could become one if the follow-on report is manipulated by the politicians. If it remains "on track", if the reported progress can be checked, then it (the report) may be accurate and the power troubles short-lived.

But 4% - 7% of every programming fix introduced new errors elsewhere. Those 7% could be very hard to purge out of the system. What will they affect?

Don't know, can't tell. If we knew where they were, we (as programmers and testers) would have already removed them.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 18, 1998.

Yeah, I'm a yo-yo. Everyone forgive me and please someone explain to me the credentials of Rick Cowles and Jon Fentress. Sorry, guess my research isn't deep enough.

-- margie mason (mar3mike@aol.com), October 18, 1998.

Pretty much the way I feel about it Robert. Even if one or more of the national grids went down, though - many areas would still have power. Local distribution should not be affected in many cases. And there is no proof the national grid will go down - but it's always best to prepare for the worst. I always have had extra food and candles in the house - I married a country woman from even further back in the sticks than I came from, and she would go absolutely nuts without a lot of stuff laid back.

Libby, this info is a little more optimistic than I really feel right now, but I could get even more optimistic as time passes. (the way some folks talk here I think they will start calling me Sunshine Boy any day now) A point that bothers me is that even after passage of the law releasing the publisher of Y2K related data from the threat of lawsuits - no one has come forth and stated things like - model number blah blah of control panel yuch made by company so and so is absolutely non compliant and cannot be made compliant - it must be replaced. Things like that are what Congress had in mind with that law - but everyone seems to be keeping it close to their vests right now. Fear of running up prices? Fear of alienating suppliers? I don't know - but I sure would like to. Anyone have any ideas?

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), October 18, 1998.

The Fentress report reeks with inconsistencies. Its almost laughable if it wasn't so serious. Lets see, the AEC has been out of business for a long time. The comment about dozens of operating systems is puzzling (and incorrect). Even novices of the US power industry know that US nuclear plants are very individual in internal design. He says nothing about SCADA/EMS and (despite Mill's pronouncement) necessary for regional grid stability. In fact, power generation can be considered a separate entity from power distribution. And nothing at all was said about the vital telecom services necessary for power distribution.

-- R. D..Herring (drherr@erols.com), October 18, 1998.

Gayla,

I am suffering from that yo-yo syndrome too! I still have such high hopes for a bright future and I wonder what life would have been like over these past months if I had no clue about Y2k.

Mike __________

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), October 18, 1998.

Here is Rick Cowles' biography (you'll need Acrobat Reader): http://www.yardeni.com/public/cowles.pdf

Taken from Yardeni's Y2K Action Conferences website.

And for Jon Huntress, I've found this mini-bio on year.2000.com's October 1997 archives, on an article Jon wrote at http://www.year2000.com/archive/NFembedded.html:

Jon Huntress works in Disaster Recovery Planning and is chairman of the Education Committee for the Portland Year 2000 Ready Users Group headed by Patrick Canniff. He has previous articles on the y2k in Computer Bits Magazine. http://www.computerbits.com. E-mail to jkhuntress@aol.com

Rick Cowls bio for those who don't have Acrobat Reader:

Rick Cowles is one of the leading experts on the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem, specializing in Y2K impact on the electric utility industry and microprocessor based control systems. He is a founding member of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibilitys Y2K Working Group, and has been featured on NPRs "Morning Edition", "All Things Considered", Tony Keyes "Y2K Advisor" radio program, NBC's "Today Show", and other North American based broadcast media outlets. Rick has also testified on the Y2K problem in the electric industry before the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee, Subcommittee on Technology. He has chaired Y2K conferences, and speaks frequently on the topic at seminars worldwide. At this time, Rick is the Director, Industry Y2K Solutions for TAVA/R.W. Beck LLC (a Seattle, Washington based partnership concentrating on Year 2000 solutions and configuration management in the electric utility markets). His past Y2K project management experience includes serving as the Year 2000 Program Manager - Utilities for a major IT systems provider, and as a consulting Y2K program manager for DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, overseeing Y2K inventory and assessment of all DMPC facilities factory floor automation. Mr. Cowles began his career in the commercial electric utility industry with Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation in 1980, after serving six years on nuclear submarines in the U.S. Navy. In 1983, he joined the Operations Staff at Public Service Electric and Gas Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station. Over the next 15 years, he worked in the power generation, regulatory and business ends of the electric industry. Hes spent time on the shop floor, in the boardroom, and control room. His information systems and instrumentation / controls experience (ISA certifications, 1983) span that entire timeframe, from System 38 and Tandem NonStop II system operations to an SAP enterprise resource planning implementation. He is the author of numerous articles on Year 2000 and the recently released book, 'Electric Utilities and Y2k'. The book and the companion website, euy2k.com, are the acknowledged worldwide authoritative discussions on the topic of Y2k in the electric industry. Rick resides in New Jersey with his wife and their two children.

-- Chris (Catsy@pond.com), October 18, 1998.

BTW, I too had the same reaction as Rick Cowls when I recieved Jon Huntress's report via email. I'm also disapointed that Rick didn't dissect the inconsistant babbles of Huntress' last 5 paragraphs, which are bizzar and void of logical explanations.

The year2000 webpage is at: http://www.year2000.com/

and to subscribe to the mailing list: http://www.year2000.com/NFmaillist.html

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), October 18, 1998.

Me again.

Found another bio a little more detailed on Jon Huntress, from the Cassendra Project's webpage: http://millennia-bcs.com/gstauthor.htm#jon

"Jon Huntress is a consultant for contingency and disaster recovery planning in Portland, Oregon. He is on a commission to advise the Senate Committee on Small Business under the Chair of Senator Bond, (R-MO) on year 2000 difficulties faced by the business community. He is also the chairperson for the Education and PR Committee for the Portland Year 2000 Ready Users Group.

He has written several articles on the year 2000 problem which are in the archives at www.year2000.com and www.computerbits.com.

You may contact the author by e-mail: jkhuntress@aol.com"

-- Chris (Catsy@pond.com), October 18, 1998.

Bravo! This is an excellent post and thread. APS had their local PR guy and CIO at our last town hall meeting here in Prescott, AZ. I left the meeting feeling better about our local power system. I balance this with posts like these and Ricks' euy2k site. "The truth is out there", and time will tell who is right. In the mean time, I bought another 50lbs. of rice to store.

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), October 18, 1998.

This thread is sooo typical of the whole Y2k situation. Here we have two guys, both with good credentials, at almost opposite ends of the spectrum regarding electric utilities. (I would lean toward Rick Cowles' opinion simply because of his direct involvement with the industry.) But this is the same thing that's going on almost everywhere else. Well respected people are saying there are not enough programmers and engineers to fix all the mission critical systems in time, yet Gov. agencies and others in private industry say they're right on track. Obviously, progress is being made, but no one knows if it's enough. Small wonder there are such wide ranging opinions on this forum, and elsewhere. The whole thing just gets very confusing. And I'm finding that more research does not "un-confuse" me. I'm still preparing. There's still too much doubt to get comfortable. This whole mess is a mess!

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), October 18, 1998.

I think Mike's assessment is right on target. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), October 18, 1998.

Interestingly, the Department of Navy's Chief Information Officer's Year 2000 Challenge (DONCIO)'s webpage lists only Rick Cowle's webpage under "Infrastructure" and "Electricity". In fact, when you click on "Electricity", you get directly to his page. Jon Huntress is not mentioned anywhere in the DONCIO's page (unless I've missed it.) It's important that we consider credentials carefully, including who listens to who, IMO, before reading anything, and not taking at face value what anyone says without at least researching thier backgrounds including other articles/books they've written.

http://www.doncio.navy.mil/y2k/year2000.htm

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), October 19, 1998.

One observation about chips -- they are ordered and installed based on the ability to meet a specification -- as long as the chip meets the designed spec it can be used. To put this in perspective an automated pump manfer could build 25 pumps and use differrent chips in each pump as long as it meets designed spec. Some of these chips might have Y2K problems. In short, random sampling of similar equipment will not necessarily root out Y2K defficient chips. Many industries just don't get this and are falling back on sketchy configuration inventories. Your observation that some in the electric power industry won't check every piece of equipment reflects this lack of understanding and is sure to open the door to problems. Jim

-- Jim McIsaac (mcisaac2@aol.com), October 21, 1998.

The Huntress report on the Houston Conference dismisses the problem of railroad switching, on the basis that any switch can be thrown by hand. I designed special trackwork for 15 years, and I figure that he's right on that, for most switches. However--

CSX states that all their switching now is controlled from HQ in Jacksonville, Florida. The manual switchstands, designed with mechanical leverage so one man can operate the switch, have largely been removed. Switching now is by means of electric motor or a hydraulic system. I think these remote control mechanisms would have to be disconnected from the switch points to allow manual operation. Without the switchstands, a long (and heavy) prybar is the tool of choice to move the switch. There's a lot of friction to overcome since the bases of the switch point rails slide on metal plates, often rusty.

Probably most people have seen a railroad marshalling yard in their city. The larger ones may have hundreds of switches. If one is thrown wrong either the train consist will be messed up or there will be damage to cars and/or track. Who is going to be standing there ready to throw the switches? Trains don't carry cabooses any more, with brakemen ready to jump out and do that. And if someone was assigned to each switch, how could the operation be coordinated?

Manual switching would have a disastrous effect on train schedules, even if fully implemented. A lot of coal has to move, and keep moving, to feed the coal-fired generating plants. A lot of food has to move to feed the grocery stores. A lot of everything has to move to feed industry and commerce.

It's true, we can go back to manual switching, one way or another. We can't do it overnight. It would take weeks at least.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), October 22, 1998.