I've been seeing some things lately that indicate electric utilities will not be permitted to "Island" (disconnect from the grid). This, I believe, has been part of meny companies contingency plans. It would be designed to protect a plant from instability in the grid.

What agency could prevent this? Part of the DOE? Does anyone have any info on this?

I would feel alot better if my utility is allowed to do this.

-- Duke 1983 (Duke1983@AOL.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

Does the grid cover the Hawaiian islands?

BTW, Hawaii is the country's warmest state, not Florida.

But I wouldn't want to be in Hawaii for this either. Can you imagine? A rock in the middle of the Pacific. Everything has to be imported (except pineapple).

-- Aloha (Aloha@from.hawaii), November 11, 1999.

I don't know, but I do have another troubling question along those lines. I live in MN. Our power provider is NSP. NSP on occasion provides emergency power for the CHICAGOland area, as it did over the heat wave in summer, when Chicago's power went fritzy several times due to demand and the shoddy equipments inability to deal with it.

I've heard, and haven't heard to the contrary yet, that CWE(Common Wealth Eddison), Chicago's provider, is a near basket case. Not only for remediation, but also the overall lax conditions and age of equipment. If y2k hits CWE and causes failure, due to y2k or a combination of effects, such as their abysmal state of equip., who will NSP provide for, if they can't support both MN and SHYTOWN?

Tough choices, but CHI has around 9-11 million peeps, including surrounding burbs. Mpls has around 3 mill.

Wait and see, I guess.

I don't want Chicago to be hurt, I have DWGI family there and am concerned greatly, as I am with most giant cities. The bigger the metro, the greater the chances of something important being overlooked.

-- CygnusXI (noburnt@toast.net), November 11, 1999.

I'm wondering, too, as we have our own electric company here and I think they might be ready.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), November 11, 1999.

Hawaii is the last place I'd want to be. After that is Canada because it is the only place on earth that taketh for the "greater good." Almost to the point of being a war criminal.

I wonder if the Canadian government learned from the charges places against Milsovic that a government may never steal what belongs to the private citizens, not their food, not their generators, not their money, not their property, not the their clothing, not their vehicles...nada? The Canadian government will be charged with crimes if it does not respect what belongs to its citizens and doesn't refrain from abusing them as individuals.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), November 11, 1999.

---why worry, or even contemplate--get kith and kin and thee and thou set up so that you don't NEED electricity, except for small amounts that you may generate yourself, using solar, wind, or low scale hydro. even gennys are false hope, as they require fuel in rather large and expensive quantities. I lived for years and years with zero public utilities, it's quite doable. look at your options, and practice now. do "dry runs" every weekend between now and rollover. friday nite till monday morning. no cheating. turn all that crap off in your home,all the utilites, no exceptions at all, and don't drive anywhere. now live. experience is the best teacher, and better get used to it, why put yourself and family(potentially) through a severe crisis/shock all at once? makes no sense. If nothing happens, no big deal, if something does, you won't be in a panic mode in the middle of winter figuring out what to do and how for EVERYTHING all at once. to me, this is the way. think some about it. low tech skills are just as hard to learn as high tech skills, you just don't get some piece of paper to hang on the wall to "prove" you have those skills. but you WILL be able to keep your family warm and fed and watered and safe. it's WORTH IT. zog the preparer

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 11, 1999.

...I just read about this last night at NERC'S web sight. They stressed that islanding would be "preferable" only in an extreme serious situation. They cautioned that the grid was designed and engineered to be interconnected and believed that it would perfrorm best if left interconnected.

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), November 11, 1999.

If islanding is adopted to any significant extent, it could put the railroads and pipelines out of business, because these industries require continuous and non interrupted power over large areas. Islanding is possibly a quick way to collapse.

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), November 11, 1999.