I believe it was yesterday that a lady from GA posted that a state trooper had told her GA power would go down 12/31 P.M. and they weren't sure how long it would take to bring it back up.

Yesterday our little one's babby sitter told my wife that her brother, a local police officer told her power would go down at 11:00 P.M. on 12/31 for an hour or so. My wife used to work for the police dept. and with this officer. State is Kansas and utility is KG&E.

This morning I mentioned this to coworker who is on city commission and she wasn't aware of power going down. She person checked with the city manager who in turned checked with KG&E. KG&E told the city manager they were not taking the power down but were concerned about drunks shooting up transformers, etc.

WND today has a link to a wire service story about the Western grid reducing power generation to 80% the evening of 12/31. My assumption is so the other 20% could be directed to areas which experience problems as they arise. Would not major users on the Western grid have to curtail operations for grid generation to be reduced to 80%?

Anyone have any more light to shed on the above rumors and the WND article?

-- Ed (ed@lizzardranch.com), December 30, 1999

Answers

Drunks are 'scheduled' to shoot at transformers at 11:00? Once again, I didn't get the memo..... Will let you know of any news in KGE land Ed.

-- DaveW (dwood@southwind.net), December 30, 1999.

I can't add to the GA info per se, but here is a personal experience for what it's worth.

I used to live on Cape Cod, Mass, and one summer afternoon (maybe 2 years ago) the power went out for a few hours. No big deal. A few days later the local newspaper (Cape Cod Times) had a small story that explained the reason for the outage. A transformer blew in Atlanta. I kid you not.

I still live in the general area, and I am watching this GA power story very closely.

-- semper paratus (heads@up.Massachusetts), December 30, 1999.

checked with spouse..he said rumor!

-- Moore Dinty Moore (dac@ccrtc.com), December 30, 1999.

My power was out today. Electric Co. said there was a problem in a sub-station, not the usual car into a pole thingy.

-- franko (franko@home.com), December 30, 1999.

I just reported on this on the radio here about this issue and my interpretation of this report is that power is decreased so that more power plants can be on line in case one goes down (evidently all are not on line at the same time) and also businesses and plants will be shutting off power and unplugging things so the demand is lower and this will help to match the demand and they can then power up as demand goes up. Just my take on it... Sheri http://news.excite.com/news/r/991229/18/millennium-power Western U.S. power plants to cut output on Dec 31

Updated 6:37 PM ET December 29, 1999

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Major power plants across the western United States will operate at reduced rates on New Year's Eve in a move that will allow electric companies to increase power output in case of any Y2K problems,

The reason for the limit, which takes effect around 9 p.m. PST (midnight EST) on Friday, is to allow more power plants to operate, thereby reducing the impact should a unit trip off line during the transition.

"We're limiting the amount of generation out of some of the larger base load plants," said Bill Comish, Y2K coordinator for the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC), a regional electric reliability council for 14 U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and a small part of Mexico.

Comish said that all power plants able to generate more than 300 megawatts have been asked to cut their output to a maximum of 80 percent of capacity.

"Generation has to match the load," Comish said, noting the region's demand for power around midnight is expected to total around 82,000 to 83,000 megawatts, lighter than normal for a Friday evening.

"Some customers plan to shutdown as a precaution and some would normally shut down for the holiday anyway," he added.

Two exceptions have been granted, both to nuclear power plants. The Palo Verde plant, at Winterburg, Ariz. will reduce output to around 95 percent and the San Onofre plant at San Clemente, Calif. will remain at 100 percent.

"Palo Verde didn't feel they could back below 95 percent safely and San Onofre asked to stay at 100 percent," he said.

The region's other nuclear power plants, Diablo Canyon, near Avila Beach, Calif. and WNP-2 near Richland, Wash. will reduce their output to no more than 80 percent.

Capacity on the region's key transmission lines also will be reduced from 9 p.m. PST on Friday.

The AC Pacific Intertie, which carries electricity between the Pacific Northwest and California, will be cut to 1,400 MW, southbound, and 500 MW, northbound, down from normal maximums of 4,350 MW and 3,675 MW respectively.

The DC Pacific Intertie, which carries power between the Northwest and southern California, will be cut to 1,086 MW, southbound, and 1,259 MW, northbound. Normal Maximums are 2,721 MW and 2,858 MW respectively.

Reduced transmission limits allows the system to be more forgiving should outages occur and also provides capacity that can be used to help buoy up areas that experience supply difficulties.

Early on Saturday morning, the WSCC expects to be able to lift its restriction and allow normal operations to resume.

"By two o'clock Pacific time in the morning we will have a pretty good idea of where we are going. At that time we expect to make a decision to go back to normal operations," Comish said.

-- Sheri (wncy2k@nccn.net), December 30, 1999.

LINK

-- Sheri (wncy2k@nccn.net), December 30, 1999.

"The reason for the limit, which takes effect around 9 p.m. PST (midnight EST) on Friday, is to allow more power plants to operate, thereby reducing the impact should a unit trip off line during the transition."

I just don't get it. Maybe I'm too ignorant about how it all works, but it doesn't make sense to me to rely on so-called "backup" power production facilities. If backup power production facilities are better (more reliable) than primary power production facilities, why aren't the backup power production facilities being utilized as the primary power production facilities???

Wouldn't you have your most reliable bulk power production units online on the rollover, operating as your primary power generating source??? And should these go down due to Y2K "glitches", why do you think your backup power production units will fare any better? Did you remediate the backup units more thoroughly than your primary bulk units?

It doesn't make sense to me.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 30, 1999.

I think this is what they're saying:

Utilities have two basic kinds of generating stations: base and peak. Base load stations are usually run full out, as they are the most efficient. Peak stations are brought on and off line as demand requires. They are often on "standby" but not really connected to the grid.

I think they want to cut the base stations down to 80% to allow more generators (say, an additional base and a bunch of peaks) to be connected to the grid. This would allow ALL of them to feed extra power immediately if some of the stations went down. Its just a case of having more generators ready to go if some of them suddenly go out.

A smart move...

-- Gary S. (garys_2k@yahoo.com), December 30, 1999.

GoldReal, The reason some of the large baseload units are going to be run at reduced power is to allow additional units to be brought online (you have to match the load demand to the generating capacity). By doing this, if you loose some of the generating units (trip offline), the baseload units can then ramp up to handle the load.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), December 30, 1999.

Even at 95% of Full Power, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest Nuke on the Planet, is still pumping out the Juice in excess of what Chernobyl or St Petersburg EVER did. Naturally, living in Central Arizona I am quite reassured, as it supplies 40% of our power. People in Southern California ought to be just as happy...most of the remaining power goes there.

Now if we have replaced ALL the chips in use by the little cooperatives (including here) that fail on Rollover to an Opposite Phase condition, we might keep the grid up!

Here's hoping and praying that in 48 hours, we can all CELEBRATE!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going to go away in JUST 27Hrs 47 min 8 seconds .com), December 30, 1999.

Gary,

Thanks for the response.

So the "extra" is actually not "extra" but reserve power generating ability that's used when demand becomes greater than the ability of the (most efficient) bulk producers to meet that demand?

Okay, so the reserve power production units are more reliable than the normally used "efficient" power production units?

Or, like a super charged battery pack on a remote control car...When extra power is needed, it kicks in? In this case, if the primary power system stops functioning (Y2K glitches) then the "extra" power generating capacity goes as well because the "extra" is dependent upon the primary SYSTEM being operational...it has to flow through the primary power system (which would not be operational).

Okay...now I get it. Thanks Gary.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 30, 1999.

Peak demand is in summer as A/C units draw more juice.

I read the above to say that "all" or nearly all generating units will be up and spinning and available to generate on short notice if needed.

Re nukes at reduced power - I believe this is an effort to improve control and response time in the event of an Event.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), December 30, 1999.

That seems like a good plan to me. But like everything in life there is a trade off. The more units online, the more units that will fall off line. Its a simple matter of percentages.

-- ds (ds@deepsouth.com), December 30, 1999.