I have been reading this forum on a nearly daily basis for nearly a year. First, thank you all, even some of you Pollies for making me think and investigate and come to decisions that make me feel comfortable.

I have a question on power. I live in the Pacific Northwest. If there are problems in the East, what is the best guess at the time it will take for the outages to reach here (if the grids go down)? Does the grid operate on GMT (ZULU time or whatever?)? Or will it fail time zone by time zone? Or will it fail as individual power companies go down? Any thoughts? Big difference between 4PM (GMT Time for 00:00:01 West coast) and 9:00pm (East coast midnight).

FYI - local County police have been told 12on/12off shifts starting Friday the 31st for 2 or 3 days or until things settle. Big time overtime if this is the case not something this county does lightly.Also, "someone" was assigned to figure out how to get his people in with neither phone nor c-phone nor radio. That makes me go 'hmmm' too.

Overheard an interesting Y2K conversation vs. Clinton fix on failure mode. One person remarked that he would not be surprised if the spin and lack of leadership was not on purpose exactly so that the EO's could be put into effect and 2000 election suspended...is the CIC really that evil (deranged)??? I hope and pray not. Just thought it was an interesting take on the gov's spin.

Also, local Costco which has had a relatively active supply of generators (from 3500's to a big $4999 deisel 12kw) has finally come to the end I think. Asked if more would be coming in and was told unless something startling happens, they "might" have some more in in late December. And, no, no more of the blue water storage barrels were on order as far as they could tell. They went through about 175 of them in a weekend a couple weeks ago.

Here's wishing the best of luck to all on this forum. Have appreciated your candor, your humor (think I am a closet FRLian) and honesty.

-- Valkyrie (anon@please.xnet), November 08, 1999

Answers

The Eastern and Western Grid arent connected to each other (except for some DC links). One of the common myths about the grid is that you can provide power from California to NY or vice versa. It doesnt work that way for a variety of reasons having to do with the laws of physics. A failure in New York wont effect Seattle. However a failure or series of failures in Montana might since they are connected by lines. The outages wont start in NY and go across the country.

The Grid doesnt really run off of GMT or local time. It runs off of load.

It might fail if enough power plants go down at one time but that is highly unlikely.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), November 08, 1999.

Valkyrie --

I'm hear in the Great Northwest as well. I have hear tell that Bonneville Power Administration has had one of the most stringent campaigns directed at compliance of their hydro-electric delivery system. You may have heard their radio spots in the Portland area, where PGE virtually gaurantee electrical power through the changeover -- something that truly surprised me. It is also a matter of record -- but maybe of little dignificance -- that Secretary of Energy whatsisname ? Bill Richardson? -- flew out to Bonneville from D.C. for 9/9/99 backup communications test -- billed as a Y2K drill.

That said, my father-in-law is a retired EE who designed substations for Bonneville during the last 30 years of his career. For what its worth, he is not taking any chances either, and I've helped him move in an extra 3 cords of firewood this fall. Regardless its at least reassuring to know that the resources from which NW power electrical power is generated are ample.

-- SH (squirrel@hunter.com), November 08, 1999.

I think NW power is fairly safe, as is ANY hydro-electric. We all share equivalent switching systems, so all over the country there is roughly the same risk of failure there. That aside, hydro power is the simplest, so the risks are probably lower. Even a hydro plant needs lubrication from petro-based sources, as someone recently pointed out. But we don't need the petro pipelines or the trains carrying coal.

I'm real concerned about the midwest and northeast in early January, if technical glitches take out the plants. And the coal plants are at risk later in the year, as their stocks run out, if trains are having any trouble. Note that many coal plants have been hoarding like crazy for months, some of them for 9 months or more, and many apparently have 6 months fuel onsite. This is all hearsay from forums like this, I have no real data.

Oops, sorry, they aren't "hoarding", that's what civilians do. They are "prepositioning strategic assets". I'm glad I found out about that, so that we wouldn't be hoarding, either. All my neighbors are now prepositioning strategic assets, which we get at Safeway and Costco. I tell people to have about a month's strategic assets, if they can, with a little to help out neighbors who either DGI, or who can't afford to preposition strategic assets.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), November 08, 1999.

Groan

http://www.koin.com/news/stories/news-19991108-151435.html

PGE Is Sold, Again

Deal Expected To Close In About A Year

PORTLAND, Posted 7:14 a.m. PST November 8, 1999 --

Enron Corporation is selling PGE for $2.1 billion.

The buyer is Sierra Pacific Resources.

Sierra Pacific will assume Enron's $80 million merger payment obligation and $1 billion of PGE debt and preferred stock. (the company's news release).

"We have been very pleased with the performance of Portland General," an Enron news release has quoted Kenneth L. Lay, Enron chairman and CEO. "However, the rapidly evolving competitive electricity market allows us to deliver commodity services and risk management products to our customers without requiring the ownership of a regulated electric utility."

The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2000.
---------------------------------

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 08, 1999.

The western power grid is the biggest in the nation. I can tell you that in my little neck of the northwest woods we are SOL. The Western grid is seperate from the others as much as anything can be seperate. If Telcos go down because of problems in New York or Chicago then we could easily be in trouble out here.

The problem is that it is not enough for just power companies to be ready (which they're not) we have to have everything happening for it all to stay up. We have to have oil, water, electricity and phones. Problems in any one of these sectors will cause problems in all the other ones.

The safest thing to do is just assume there will be disruptions of some kind somewhere. It might happen to you or it might not. Certainly worth investing in a camp stove some beans and water for.

-- Dolma Lhamo (I'm@nonymous.now), November 08, 1999.

So Cal Edison said they run off Mountain Time Zone. If there are any problems it will come at 11 o'clock PST. Don't know if your provider is set up the same, however.

-- Wild Celt (jig@is_up.soon), November 08, 1999.