Thanks to someone a few days ago, I am starting to checkout Greenspun's electric utility forum:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=Electric%20Utilities%20and%20Y2K

One of the threads was a discussion of the likelihood that the grid would be up again after only 15-30 days. The sense is that "back to normal" after 2000 may well mean periods of rationing, like a couple hours per day or more.

My question to you is: How do you think rationing would affect you (and do you have a contingency plan)?

I assume the point of rationing is to do it at a time of day when it could make a difference. It suddenly occurred to me that, since I work in a high-rise office building, 2-3 hours/day in the middle of the day might as well be 24/7 because the building would be shut down for safety reasons. One more thing I'm sure my employer hasn't considered. I'm also think that my fallback of using public transportation if there is an oil shortage could be a problem since the last leg to work is electrically-powered.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), February 14, 1999

Answers

Even if power was rationed to 2 hours a day, what are the plans for the other 22 hours? It may give you an opportunity to wash 2 loads of clothes (provided your water company can get the water to you). Two hours of power given to me at 2 a.m. in the morning is worthless to me. As a matter of fact, I may like living without power so much that I just may shut the breaker off when it finally does come back on.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), February 14, 1999.

I expect to be well off enough power wise, that it'll be no big deal, really. If the power is up for awhile, I'll take advantage of it, and if it's not, oh well.

-- Bill (billclo@hotmail.com), February 14, 1999.

The Bear bunch isn't expecting to have *any* power. So 2 hrs/day would make many smiles.

-- Greybear

- Got batteries?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 14, 1999.

Two hours of electricity per day would be a real blessing! There's much that could be done with this. For starters:

1. Two hours of heating may mean that your pipes won't freeze and break.

2. Two hours of charging a small bank of batteries can mean lights and communications for the other twenty-two hours.

3. Perhaps most importantly, just two hours of electricity per day may stave off absolute panic among the populace. It would demonstrate that at least some steps are being taken to mitigate the situation.

-- Why2K? (who@knows.com), February 14, 1999.

Think "camping."

More than that looks good. Question is, is it 2 hours of clean or dirty power being rationed?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 14, 1999.

Why2K. Giving the populace 2 hours of power is like giving a kid a sucker and then taking it away from him. The populace will be even more pissed because they will want 24 hours instead of 2. I can see it right now, right in the middle of Jerry Springer and your 2 hours of power are up, your washer is still on the wash cycle, your dishwasher hasn't finished the rinse cycle, your pot of beans are half done, it's 110 degrees outside and your air conditioner only got it down to 100 inside. Yeh, people will go ballistic!

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), February 14, 1999.

Dick Mills' column had an interesting discussion on this last year on the Westergaard Year 2000 site - www.y2ktimebomb.com/PP/index.htm -

He argued that after the global blackout in January, power would be restored but not fully. He warned about power shortages, most likely happening in the summer of 2000, and daily power outages during peak hours.

In my area that would be hellish, because it gets warm and toasty here starting in May and does not cool off until about October. And, I don't even live in Arizona! As you say, people get cranky when the house doesn't cool off below 100 degrees. I'm thinking of looking for a cooler climate for next summer, or maybe getting a generator to run my air conditioner!

Yikes.

-- Margaret Janssen (janssm@aol.com), February 14, 1999.

Well, I can remember the UK power wrrers strike (1974 I think). We had power rationing. In industry this was a three-day working week, no power the other two days. (I guess special arrangements were made for plant that could not survive an outage as I don't remember any large-scale damage to plant). At home, there was a timetable of low, medium and high risk four-hour (?) "slots". High often meant power off. Medium very occasionally did. It was a nuisance, nothing worse.

Y2K comment. This is what you can do if the SCADA and telecomms infrastructures are OK. If they are disrupted and you have to go to manual switching, I doubt if a reliable schedule could be implemented. My guess is that in at least some localities, the switches will be set quasi-permanently or at best daily. Essential services will remain powered, but you may well be without domestic power for long periods. If you live somewhere cold, be prepared!

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), February 15, 1999.

Thanks for all the responses. Except for Nigel, they have sort of proven the realization that I had that I have only been thinking in terms how it would affect home life. A couple hours a week to do laundry and vacuuming, and I would do quite well. BUT, any interruption at work could cost me my job. I need to think a whole lot more about how to deal with the possibility that post-2000, normality might be *defined* by rationing and equipment-damaging brownouts.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), February 15, 1999.