North American Power Grid Passes '9/9/99' Test

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North American Power Grid Passes '9/9/99' Test

Updated 4:50 AM ET September 9, 1999

By Patrick Connole

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The North American power grid passed the "9/9/99" test -- a date change viewed as a dress rehearsal for the Year 2000 calendar switch, U.S. officials said early Thursday.

"The success of the drills held today is yet another step to assure electricity customers that the lights will stay on in the new millennium," U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said.

Thursday is 9/9/99, a date used by some older computer systems as a signal to shut down, and about 500 utilities throughout the United States and Canada used the changeover to conduct a full scale practice for the Y2K transition.

Y2K refers to fears that older computers programmed to read only the last two digits of a date will read "2000" as "1900," triggering a chain reaction of breakdowns.

Richardson, speaking from a Bonneville Power Administration power station in Vancouver, Wash., conceded that choice of "9999" for the drill was largely symbolic, since most computer programmers did not expect major problems to emerge.

Bonneville, based in Portland, Ore., is a federal power marketing agency which owns and operates more than 15,000 miles of high-voltage electricity transmission lines across eight western states.

"We don't expect any kind of major problem at all, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of it, or be unprepared. It's a good time to think about testing out contingency plans for Y2K," said Kazim Isfahani, Y2K expert at Norwell, Mass.- based Giga Information Group.

"We have had no reports of any Y2K failures at utilities or DOE facilities," said John Gilligan, DOE chief information officer. Forty-two DOE sites participated in the drills.

Richardson also warned Wednesday that although 99 percent of the nation's electricity supply was Y2K-ready, 28 power providers were not yet up to speed on preventing potential computer glitches.

He ordered random reviews of another 20 electric utilities over the coming months as part of the DOE's audit of Y2K- readiness.

Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said 28 nuclear power reactors need to upgrade their computers to avoid possible Y2K computer problems, but said none of the work yet to be done would jeopardize public safety.

Thursday's date change was also used to test Y2K contingency plans in other parts of the world.

Japanese companies and financial markets reported no computer-related problems Thursday, although there were some minor ripples ahead of the event.

The Bank of Japan said it had to pump fresh funds into the banking system Wednesday as some banks scrambled to get extra funds in case there were any problems in the computer- dependent financial markets.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange said its systems were operating normally and Japan Railways said it conducted successful Y2K drill Wednesday.

Firms around the world have spent billions of dollars to ensure that their computers will continue to operate when their system clocks switch to 2000.

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The PR "White Wash" is in high gear!! Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 09, 1999

Answers

WHY am I NOT surprised? geesh, it is morning and they are already done????? what did they do make one phone call to each other as a test? Maybe next time they will announce the results prior to the test. Hey, at least this gives me a little more time to shop.

-- tt (cuddluppy@yahoo.com), September 09, 1999.

I thought the grid was supposed to do end to end testing for Jan 1 today, but I guess they backed out because of the fact that they aren't compliant enough to do so and could cause real problems. So did they use the 9999 date or 090999 date as a smokescreen to lull Americans to sleep about the real date problem.

-- ? (??@.??.com), September 09, 1999.

Unfortunately, Question Mark's comment, " I thought the grid was supposed to do end to end testing for Jan 1 today..." reveals how much misinformation was spread about this NERC drill. No, they weren't supposed to do end to end testing, and nobody at NERC ever said they were going to. It was a communications drill and that is all. Now, it seems that NERC let the media get away with implying that the drill was a test of the grid, but it wasn't.

"So did they use the 9999 date or 090999 date as a smokescreen to lull Americans to sleep about the real date problem..." seems like this was the intention of allowing this disinfornation to fester. The press on this 9999 thing was simply incredible. It should have been minor.

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), September 09, 1999.


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