Here's an amazing document just posted on Franklin Frith's website -- www.y2kcoming.com --- a 684 (PDF format) pp. document created " to assist electric utilities who have not completed their preparation and testing for the year 2000 (y2K) rollover. Through the EPRI program, utilities came together in the Fall of 1997 to develop a program for sharing inventory, testing, and planning information on Y2K. An EPRI team developed this guidebook based on the information pprovided in the p[ast two years from over 100 utilities and other energy companies as they prepared for Y2K."

Has this been posted before?" I obviously missed it. Chapters include:

2: RISK REDUCTION 3: RECOVERING FROM ROLLOVER FAILURE 4: ASSESSMENT 5: TESTING 6: CONTINGENCY PLANNING 7: SUPPLY CHAIN 8: EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS 9: CUSTOMER SERVICE APPENDICES

The document also includes links to other guidbooks and manuals published earlier by EPRI.

Chapter 2 includes a section titled "Where to Start"

"Here is a suggested approach:

* Determine what you need to accomplish to maintain the operation of your grid; * Make a strong commitment to the safety of your employees and the general public; * Determine what is critical to keeping the bulk of your system functional; * If you were to have problems or failures, deterine hwo you would recvoer in the shortest amount of time; * Establish what you need to communicate and how you will do so [???]

Interesting "insider" reading, to say the least; and a great antidte to the patronizing spin we'be heard during the last 18 months.

>"<

-- SH (squirrel@huntr.com), December 28, 1999

Answers

Hmmm. Yes evidently the publication of this docuent on the net correponds with the date of its delivery to the intended utilities. EPRI says on p. 2-1 -- GET THIS!!! -- "THE REMAINING WEEKS [!!!] OF 1999 WILL LIMIT WHAT YOU CAN DO. WE SUGGEST ADOPTING A MISSION CRITICAL APPROACH WHICH ESSENTIALLY MEANS FOCUSING ALL YOUR EFFORTS ON A FEW KEY ITEMS WHICH HAVE THE GREATEST POTENTIAL FOR EITHER ELIMINATING OR MANAGING KEY RISKS" !!!

In other words -- the utilities to whom this report was directed are expected to be only BEGINNING to address their embedded systems problems, as of last month, November, 1999. Now then ... what's the link to that Infomagic essay .....?

-- mrunderhill (prancing@pony.pub), December 28, 1999.

Don't be too quick to jump into assumptions here: I talked to EPRI rep's working on this reference last summer (July-Aug 1998) - and they were using it then. (Electric Power Research Institue)

EPRI started as a private (for profit) data clearinghouse for electric utilities and power plants who paid (lots of dollars) for the priviledge to join the association. So everybody who joins shares the data - but outsiders (us included) aren't getting the actual data. I'm surprised this was released now, but the real data has been behid the scenery for a while.

Several natural gas distributors also joined since the technology is similar to electric distribution: shows how good the API has been about creating and sharing data. A gas company has to go look for electric databases to find out what works!

How up to date is it? Don't know...they were regularly updating it: BUT the source data for chips and systems changes rapidly - as recently as Oct and Nov several thousand processors were added, deleted, and updated in at least one list.

Obviously too - it is only as good as your search and replace decisions.

So companies that thought they were compliance - as of Setpember for example, might find out in Nov that certain processors were bad, others were good that had already been replaced.....worse, some of the replaced ones may turn out bad. Means lots of rework, increases chances for errors.

---...---..---...

Notice anyway though those 680 pages of data: every one of them might fail, might be correctly reported, outdated, or incorrectly tested - even for those that are "okay"..... but most "should be okay" - we just can't tell ahead of time which ones.

-- Robert A Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 28, 1999.

Crash and Burn Time!!! (CBT!!!)

Seriously, we are anticipating almost certain irreparable damage to most of the HVAC Systems Worldwide in the next 54 to 79 Hour time frame.

You heard it here first.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in just 77 hours.com), December 28, 1999.

What about RC's source saying the Elec (Nuke) facilities had embeddeds that would put us under a cloud?

****Did any of you pros come across anything in this book to suggest RC's dismissal of this scenario was appropriate? Please pass it on, if located.

Not to belittle RC's handling of the cooment; given no evidence, dismissal was the only legitimate option at that time. My concern remains researching the theory (that the oil refinery embeddeds that are inaccesible and will go critical are also in our nuke power plants and will suffer the same fate) to predict with greater certainty that it is improbable.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 28, 1999.

Robert,

Thanks for backdating the document for us:)

I guess this late release is a CY maneuver then. If a system goes critical, and this org. is recognized as sitting on data that could have prevented an incident, then they would be *hanged*.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 28, 1999.

should read: CYA maneuver.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 28, 1999.