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Updated: Wednesday, December 22, 1999

The Power Grid: Enormous, vulnerable, and poorly understood

FOLSOM, CA. (AP) - To pierce the heart of California's $23 billion electric power grid, Y2K terrorists would have to steal Ed Riley's hands.

Riley, operations director of the agency known as the California Independent System Operator, has negotiated his way past a receptionist, security cameras and roving guards to reach Mission Control, buried in an unmarked building in a look-alike office park in suburban Sacramento.

At the threshold of the grid's command center, he high-fives a fingerprint scanner. A green laser reads his unique pattern of fingerprint whorls and palm creases to satisfy the grid's computer - Y2K compliant, of course - that the man standing at the door is really Ed Riley. The boss.

Click. Enter.

Windowless and larger than a movie theater, the room could be the set for the next James Bond thriller.

Workers confer in whispers at 12 banks of computers. They are dwarfed by a mosaic map of California's power grid and its extensions from British Columbia to Baja. The map extends 160 feet - so long the wall must bend to accommodate it.

By itself, the California grid is the fifth largest in the world.

Yet, it is but one corner of the nation's electrical system power - an omnipresent but poorly understood web of generating plants, transmission lines and transformers that combine to make North American cities and towns twinkle like stars in a galaxy.

Now, Y2K fears have bestowed another description on the power grid:

Vulnerable.

"The grid is only as strong as its weakest member," said Rick Cowles, a New Jersey-based utilities consultant who testified at Senate Y2K hearings. "The first end-to-end test we'll have is during the actual transition to January 1."

Riley can't worry about the entire nation. His job is to keep the most populous state from plunging into a blackout at the dawn of the new millennium.

Every four seconds, he receives a status report on the constant torrent of electrons as they are generated at 700 power plants and race down transmission lines spanning 124,000 square miles.

His system crackles with 46,000 megawatts of juice serving 27 million of the world's most energy-insatiable consumers. Every light bulb. Every coffee maker. Every computer. Every curling iron.

About 600 billion billion (that's right: 600 billion billion) electrons a second must flow through the filament of a 100-watt bulb so you and your child can read about Harry Potter's latest adventures at the Wizard School. Until the lights flicker, few people think about what it takes to keep them on.

Utility operators in California and nationwide hope to keep it that way. They are confident that Y2K will pass without a catastrophic power outage, or at least one of their own making.

The industry has spent as much as $4.5 billion to replace or reprogram computers that might have otherwise convulsed at the stroke of 2000. Some individual utilities required $70 million in repairs.

Large portions of the national grid, including California's system, passed a Y2K simulation on September 9. Since then the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies have certified that the grid - including nuclear stations - poses no significant worries.

Y2K should be an ordinary winter's night for power consumption and reliability, they say, and they warn people not to jump to conclusions if their lights should go out. After all, households already spend up to 72 hours a year on average without electricity because of system hiccups and weather-related power interruptions, said John Koskinen, President Clinton's top Y2K expert.

They recommend taking routine precautions: food, water, batteries and blankets sufficient for a few days.

"The electrical utility industry is ready for the millennium rollover," declared Michael R. Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the grid's overseer.

Yet Y2K remains Riley's torment.

"I worry about crackpots," he said. "My biggest fear is that some nuts will try to blow up a transmission tower."

Paranoid? Consider recent events.

On Dec. 18, an Algerian man was charged with allegedly trying to smuggle a carload of bomb-making materials aboard a ferry into Washington state.

On Dec. 4, federal agents arrested two men for plotting to bomb a 24-million gallon liquid propane facility in Elk Grove, about 30 minutes from the California ISO.

It's here, in the California ISO's command center, that Riley would try to contain the damage from an attack by trying to reroute power to other lines within seconds.

"The FBI is chasing down every lead related to Y2K," Riley said. "We've heightened security at all of our facilities."

It's a huge task that extends to every corner of the United States, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

The national grid consists of more than 3,000 power plants - fueled by coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro and wind. Combined they generate 824,569 megawatts at the peak of the summer.

There's no battery big enough to store such vast amounts of energy. So the system operates 365 days a year, 24-7.

It's at this stage of the grid - where electricity is made - that hundreds of thousands of computers and software programs, as well as embedded microchips, automatically operate and monitor key components.

In a conventional power plant, conveyor belts haul 20,000 tons of coal a day into a blast furnace. Other plants run onoil or natural gas.

They fire boilers that produce high-pressure steam superheated to 930 degrees Fahrenheit. The steam spins windmill-like turbines connected to a shaft at 3,600 rpm. The shaft extends into a generator, rotating a set of large electromagnets that induce an alternating current of 22,000 volts in an armature of thick copper rods.

The new electricity reaches its customers on transmission lines in a stream of electrons that jump from atom to atom along copper wires.

Electricity dissipates as it encounters resistance in the wire, heating the copper and surrounding air. To compensate, utilities employ transformers to increase the current's voltage, or the force at which the current flows.

Transformers use magnetic fields to step up the current to more than 400,000 volts. This super-current races for hundreds of miles along a maze of wires strung between 150-foot metal towers connecting cities and states.

Nationwide, the grid's web of interstate high voltage transmission lines travel 201,243 miles. That's enough to encircle the planet eight times.

As the electricity approaches a community, other transformers reverse the process and lower the voltage to levels that can light buildings instead of melt them or burn them down.

It's complicated because different customers require different voltages. Railroads might run commuter trains on 33,000 volts. But households only require 110 volts for small appliances and lights.

The transmission and distribution system doesn't rely much on computers. It can be operated manually by technicians who read dials and flip switches.

"It's mostly poles and wires," said James Sinclair, spokesman for ISO New England, a regional grid operator that hurls electricity from hydro stations in Quebec to the doorstep of New York City.

"Not much there that can go awry," Sinclair said.

But the network is far-flung, and isolated equipment is vulnerable to attacks or accidents.

Power surges can melt transmission lines. Electrical arcs between terminals can fuse iron components. Sudden spikes or dips in demand can trigger brownouts.

That's why the grid has to be flexible - and neighborly.

By midmorning on July 6, operators at the Mid-Atlantic grid in Norristown, Pa. saw power demand exceeding their plants' capacity. To keep this corner of the grid from collapsing - it serves Washington. DC., Baltimore and Philadelphia - grid operators as far away as Oklahoma forced extra power to the Eastern cities.

But it's not too neighborly. Mid-Atlantic had to buy the extra power at prices 30 times higher than the regular rate.

When it works, this interconnectedness can prevent power outages, but it can also backfire and cause outages to ripple across large territories.

In 1996, hot weather and rising demand caused 345,000-volt power lines to sag against tree limbs in Idaho and Oregon. A pair of blackouts affected millions in 14 Western states.

In January, 1998, a massive ice storm toppled transmission lines in Quebec. Service in northern New England was interrupted for weeks.

Cowles hopes that all facilities, including rural and older ones, will prove to be Y2K-compliant. "If one utility hasn't done their Y2K homework, then everyone is going to have problems," he predicts.

He advises anyone who depends on electrical equipment to have a backup plan.

"Some people can get by with flashlights and candles and a propane stove," he said. "But my father depends on an oxygen machine. It makes sense for him to have a portable generator."

On New Year's Eve, grid operators nationwide are taking several precautions:

They'll double reserve generating power to 20 percent in case power stations trip off-line.

They're urging industrial customers not to curtail their energy use. Too little demand can upset the grid, too;

They're reducing open lines between regions and states to prevent outages from spreading like wildfire.

They've purchased satellite phones and two-way radios in case telephone service is lost.

Extra repairmen will be posted at vulnerable choke-points - transformers, circuit breakers and transmission lines. ISO New England alone will have 1,500 crews on duty.

All of this gives Riley one final worry: "I expect that we'll be criticized for spending money if nothing happens."

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), December 22, 1999

Answers

They're urging industrial customers not to curtail their energy use. Too little demand can upset the grid, too

Hmmm, and with all the reports of manufacturers shutting down for the rollover, could prove to be interesting.

-- Lurker (eye@spy.net), December 22, 1999.

This leads one to think that our infrastructure may not be prepared for preparations.

-- Reporter (reporter_atlarge@hotmail.com), December 22, 1999.

"...A green laser reads his unique pattern of fingerprint whorls and palm creases to satisfy the grid's computer - Y2K compliant, of course - that the man standing at the door is really Ed Riley. The boss..."I worry about crackpots," he said. "My biggest fear is that some nuts will try to blow up a transmission tower."..To pierce the heart of California's $23 billion electric power grid, Y2K terrorists would have to steal Ed Riley's hands."

I wonder if Ed Riley is worried that some crackpot nut, after reading this article, might try to steal his hands. What a weird thing for the writer to say.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 22, 1999.

Yeah, it's meant to be "light-hearted," but should nOT have been suggested at all.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 22, 1999.

Vulnerable.

"The grid is only as strong as its weakest member," said Rick Cowles, a New Jersey-based utilities consultant who testified at Senate Y2K hearings. "The first end-to-end test we'll have is during the actual transition to January 1."

Be prepared for the unexpected.

-- Prepare (but@prepare.early), December 22, 1999.