Will we have power on Jan. 1, 2000?

Will the lights go out when the year 2000 arrives? That's the key question a Senate hearing on the "Year 2000" computer bug was tackling Friday. The committee chairman, for one, believes that if today were Jan. 1, 2000, the chance of the nation's power grid collapsing would be 100 percent.

Testimony by experts, set to begin today, can be heard live via the Fednet information network.

At risk are about 6,000 power plants, half a million miles of high-voltage power lines and about 112,000 substations, most of which depend on built-in, preprogrammed microprocessors called "embedded systems."

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The hearing was called by the Senate's new Year 2000 committee, chaired by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah. It was Bennett who warned that the U.S. power grid would collapse if today were Jan. 1, 2000.

Because we still have 18 months, he added, the chance of collapse on that date are 40 percent - obviously not as high, but still significant. Experts have warned that many computers programmed to recognize just the last two digits of a year will fail as of January first, 2000, when the machines assume it's the year 1900.

Concern about city utilities
Even before the hearing began, experts noted that city-owned power companies appeared the most vulnerable. They provide 25 percent of the nation's power, but more importantly the nature of the interconnected power grid means that if even only a few utilities aren't compliant by 2000 the entire grid could be hit hard.

Since all power companies, private and public alike, are interconnected , outages anywhere can have a ripple effect, destabilizing other parts of the grid and triggering outages sometimes several states away.

"The whole is only as strong as the all the pieces ... the whole grid has to work as well," said Mike McClure, head of Year 2000 efforts at the Atlanta-based utility Southern Company.

McClure and Dennis Grabow, head of The Millennium Investment Corp, are among those that city-owned utilities are lagging behind investor-owned power companies. "I am definitely concerned," Grabow said. "Some of the municipal companies, often for lack of budget, haven't even started the inventory or checking process."

The chip problem
The heart of the utilities' problem are the "embedded systems," or the many computer chips contained within a single mainframe computer.

"When you consider the number of chips that need changing, outages are almost a certainty," said Andrew Pegalis, head of Next Millennium Consulting. "Embedded systems require a monumental effort. They first must be located, they must then be tested, and some of the manufacturers of these chips have gone out of business, which means you often don't know how they were programmed."

Industry analysts predict the tedious task, including replacement chips, will cost most power companies between $10 million and $100 million.

McClure said Southern has allocated $85.6 million to the problem, of which it has already spent $19 million.

Southern's approach is typical: Locate embedded systems, test them to identify which pose problems, swap out those that are critical to operating the power system and develop contingency plans to deal with eventual emergencies.

McClure said he anticipated few problems on Southern's own system, and that this was the case with the nearly 200 other big, investor-owned U.S. power companies.

He added that Southern has completed the identification phase of the program and was now busy testing. "Control systems are the central nervous system of a power plant," he said, "and that's where we're focusing most of our attention." The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. Will the lights go out when the year 2000 arrives? That's the key question a Senate hearing on the "Year 2000" computer bug was tackling Friday. The committee chairman, for one, believes that if today were Jan. 1, 2000, the chance of the nation's power grid collapsing would be 100 percent.

Testimony by experts, set to begin today, can be heard live via the Fednet information network.

At risk are about 6,000 power plants, half a million miles of high-voltage power lines and about 112,000 substations, most of which depend on built-in, preprogrammed microprocessors called "embedded systems."

	Government agencies earn an "F" in Y2K preparations.
	A leading Congressman says forget about Microsoft, Y2K needs all of our attention.

The hearing was called by the Senate's new Year 2000 committee, chaired by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah. It was Bennett who warned that the U.S. power grid would collapse if today were Jan. 1, 2000.

Because we still have 18 months, he added, the chance of collapse on that date are 40 percent - obviously not as high, but still significant. Experts have warned that many computers programmed to recognize just the last two digits of a year will fail as of January first, 2000, when the machines assume it's the year 1900.

Concern about city utilities
Even before the hearing began, experts noted that city-owned power companies appeared the most vulnerable. They provide 25 percent of the nation's power, but more importantly the nature of the interconnected power grid means that if even only a few utilities aren't compliant by 2000 the entire grid could be hit hard.

Since all power companies, private and public alike, are interconnected , outages anywhere can have a ripple effect, destabilizing other parts of the grid and triggering outages sometimes several states away.

"The whole is only as strong as the all the pieces ... the whole grid has to work as well," said Mike McClure, head of Year 2000 efforts at the Atlanta-based utility Southern Company.

McClure and Dennis Grabow, head of The Millennium Investment Corp, are among those that city-owned utilities are lagging behind investor-owned power companies. "I am definitely concerned," Grabow said. "Some of the municipal companies, often for lack of budget, haven't even started the inventory or checking process."

The chip problem
The heart of the utilities' problem are the "embedded systems," or the many computer chips contained within a single mainframe computer.

"When you consider the number of chips that need changing, outages are almost a certainty," said Andrew Pegalis, head of Next Millennium Consulting. "Embedded systems require a monumental effort. They first must be located, they must then be tested, and some of the manufacturers of these chips have gone out of business, which means you often don't know how they were programmed."

Industry analysts predict the tedious task, including replacement chips, will cost most power companies between $10 million and $100 million.

McClure said Southern has allocated $85.6 million to the problem, of which it has already spent $19 million.

Southern's approach is typical: Locate embedded systems, test them to identify which pose problems, swap out those that are critical to operating the power system and develop contingency plans to deal with eventual emergencies.

McClure said he anticipated few problems on Southern's own system, and that this was the case with the nearly 200 other big, investor-owned U.S. power companies.

He added that Southern has completed the identification phase of the program and was now busy testing. "Control systems are the central nervous system of a power plant," he said, "and that's where we're focusing most of our attention." The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.