Premature Media Announcement (Electric System)

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NHNE reported the following story this a couple of hours ago. The declaration of victory seems premature, at best. Did an AP bureau editor slip up and publish a prepared (canned) press release nearly four hours in advance? The lead might be accurate prophecy, but it's not accurate journalism.

Michael Brownlee Tucson AZ

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US ELECTRIC SYSTEM PASSES 1ST TEST Friday December 31 8:18 PM ET

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991231/pl/y2k_energy_2.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - America's electricity system passed its first real-world test Friday night as a third of the power companies' equipment rolled through the Y2K transition without problems, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said.

But officials were watching three nuclear power plants that unexpectedly shut down in South Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania as the new year approached, although none of the shutdowns were found to be Y2K-related. ``All indications are we are going to successfully roll over,'' Richardson said as he received reports from across the country showing that computers operating the interconnecting electricity grids passed muster.



-- Michael Brownlee (michael@visibiliti.com), December 31, 1999

Answers

These systems were on GMT, not US time. Doyle

CROSSPOST FROM SANGERSREVIEW

U.S. Power Plant Has Minor Y2K Glitch, No Outage (Yahoo! News/Reuters) "A power plant in the Midwest experienced a date-related computer glitch Friday after passing midnight Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but electricity supply was not disrupted and the problem was fixed quickly, electric industry officials said. A calendar clock coordinating generation and transmission systems jumped ahead 35 days at the plant, but was corrected in a few minutes and did not affect customers or disrupt power, said John Castagna, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute. Nearly one-third of all U.S. electric utilities have their operations timed to GMT, which passed midnight at 7 p.m. EST..."

-- Doyle Dacus (doydacus@feist.com), December 31, 1999.


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