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[Utilities] Request assistance re: ... understandable, quantifiable explanation of the (percentage) liklihood of "local" (southeast Michigan; providers: DTE and MichCon) power grid brown-outs and/or black-outs ...

I'll be giving a (low-tech) Y2K presentation to a small group (10-20) of neighbors (not mine!) and their families on Saturday, October 23.

The party arranging this get together, has requested an understandable, quantifiable explanation of the (percentage) liklihood of "local" (southeast Michigan; providers: DTE and MichCon) power grid brown-outs and/or black-outs.

I've tried.

IMHO:

. Liklihood of brown-outs and/or blackouts: 90% chance

. Duration of brown-outs and/or black-outs: 5 to 15 years

. Effects of brown-outs and/or black-outs: Equivalent ( Can't run electronics and/or electric motors in either scenario! Risk of frying and/or burning up motors is virtually 100%. )

. Development and manfacture of _replacement_ electronics is virtually impossible without stable power grid and social conditions _at_ locations of geophysically distributed vendors.

. Moving highly specialized equipment and technical personnel to alternative sites with stable power grid and social conditions is nigh impossible in a widespread chaotic/post-collapse scenario.

These are my thoughts on this matter, thusfar.

Any input from the NON-TROLL gallery is welcome.

Thank you in advance!!

Regards, Bob Mangus

Note:

I have 6 years ( 1990-1995, Ford Motor Company, Electronics Technical Center [ETC; now, Visteon(TM)], Dearborn, Michigan ) experience in automotive body/engine controller software/hardware. The automotive electrical supply ( e.g., 15 volt battery/alternator ) is a "dirty" ( volatile! ) environment, requiring extraordinary protection (via capacitors) of delicate circuitry that operates at +/-5mV.

Explaining these technical nuances to "mere mortals"--LOL!--is quite a challenge for this primarily software(!) and neo-phyte ( I learned what I _needed_ to know via OJT!) electrical egineer.

In the past I've used simple explanations re the importance of unplugging--in the instance of brown-outs and/or black-outs:

. Regrigerators . Freezers . Medical equipment/devices . Well (water) pumps . any electronics (e.g., telephones, televisions, computers, FAX machines, etc. ) . Game systems . Et al

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-- Robert Mangus (rmangus1@yahoo.com), October 10, 1999

Answers

Robert,

If you're looking for credible numbers, I would suggest that you contact Roleigh Martin or Rick Cowles. Roleigh lives in the Minneapolis area, and he may have some data from the utilities in your area. Rick lives back on the East Coast, but he too may have some figures.

Interestingly, the local utility in my area gave a Y2K community presentation earlier this year, and they DID provide a number -- as I recall, they suggested a 1% chance of "minor" failures lasting 1-4 hours. I don't know how they came up with that number, but at least it provided something to work with...

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), October 10, 1999.

Bob,

I don't know that you can find the figures you are looking for. Seems this "local or regional problems" is used by "officials" in order to AVOID quantifying anything! At least I've not come across any actual numbers.

I did read something a while back that stated that Fed.Gov.Org considers "local" to be anything up to and including an ENTIRE STATE and "regional" being more than one state! I guess when you're looking at the entire national grid, those definitions work. Once you realize what their definition of local and regional is, it does throw a different light on things...eh?

-- Don Wegner (donfmwyo@earthlink.net), October 10, 1999.

My intial thoughts and opinion of what will happen. About 5 days before rollover the day after christmas we will see spot blackouts in every city for a couple of hours in duration as they start loading remediated software into the host sites. they will stagger when they upload the new or fixcode.

Some will work fine and some will not right off the gate. they will do this in an segment by segment region to prevent the collapse of the grid if to many problems are coming up with the new y2k ready programs. These segments will be in island mode for troubleshooting purposes from the main grids. They will start on the small cities first than the medium then the large so if they tank they can be brought up in short duration with out unbalancing the grids. I think that the hope is that if enough of the small ones work they can provide at least some power to the larger cities if code remedation is a failure. Two days before day 00 the whole grid will go into a safe mode so that it could be quickly protected and isolated from surges and unbalace conditions until we are three days into the new year.

1 they will need to assure telecommunications are working properly before they put the grid back on line( your three day storm approach). 2 The blackouts and brownout have to occur to ensure the protection of the critical infrastructures from fire damage. Embeddeds will have to be checked on critical path equipment to ensure the switch over is o.k.. This will have to be done to check major shorts.

Billions of dollars of equipment is at risk, so they will walk through the circuits carefully. No rocket science just prudent protection of the resources. If the code and the embedded systems make the rollover relatively successful we can expect the lights back on in 4-7 days with minor rolling outages from area to area as power rashioning will be in effect until scope is determined or if the all clear is sounded to resume full power. Expect a week extra vacation after the new year for those not directly involved in the critical utilities industries. My hope is that they have gotten it right the first time. We shall soon see. Its not an easy bridge they will have to cross. My prayers are with all those that are tasked with keeping our utilities working.

-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @ conservation . com), October 11, 1999.

Part 2 of my above thread If the remediation code is a partial failure it could be 6-8 weeks before rashioned couple of hours a day power is delivered.

Utility worst case senario If they run it right down to the wire with out doing the measures I have outlined above and the code fix is not good it will bring down the whole works for years. It will be a presidential decision how it will be called the last week of the year.

-- y2k aware mike (y2k aware mike @ conservation . com), October 11, 1999.

The problem with the bridge they're building is that the guys tieing the ropes are steel engineers, and it's a rope bridge.

Night Train

-- je an ol footballer, a-scratchin his head (NIghttr@in.lane), October 11, 1999.

There is a personal "electric utility Y2K risk management assessment" form at Rick Cowles' new website, energyland.net. If you go to the site map, you'll find it listed. I found it useful for evaluating my personal risks relative to my own electric company. It would probably be interesting to have each person at your presentation fill out the form separately, and then compare an

-- Dale Leaderer (dleaderer@hotmail.com), October 11, 1999.

Thanks Bob...As always, good to hear from you. I am also a "local", uncomfortably located in a western Detroit suburb (about 2 miles from "the border"). My plan envisages a hasty bug-out if it starts to go down and heading to a prepared location well north of here (as in beyond the Mackinac bridge). I am currently unemployed (resigned...employer is keeping me on the payroll until mid-November) and would like to leave NOW. Unfortunately, my "significant other" is a DGI and refuses to leave. I could really use some "inspiration" at this point. Keep the posts coming...we here in southeast MI need all the info. we can get.

-- Tom (Tom@hearthedrums.com), October 11, 1999.

Bunch of nonsense.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), October 12, 1999.

Ok...some of the information you are looking for can be found at:

http://www.bashar.com/GSP/houston1.htm

I compiled and edited 5 or 6 sources of information on power grid reliability, calculating the odds of systemic failure, the Army Assessment, IEEE assessemnt and others. Read them as a whole, and you'll get the picture. Hope this helps you some.

Steve Meyers Global Strategies Proeject http://www.bashar.com/GSP

-- Steve Meyers (SMeyers33@aol.com), October 12, 1999.