Contingency planning for Y2K impact in power delivery systems

This paper discusses means of preparing electric utility managers and operators for Year 2000 (Y2K) related failures within the power delivery system. Although most utilities and equipment manufacturers are cooperating and working hard to best prepare the system for the Year 2000 rollover, it is safe to assume that the risk for Y2K related failures will exist in power delivery systems and will impact the operation of utilities. First, the authors discuss risk simulations which show and quantify the risk that end-users will lose power and consequently that utilities will lose revenues. The benefit of risk simulations is to provide an up-to-date overall picture of power delivery systems as Y2K remediation efforts are undertaken. As a result, prioritization of Y2K projects and contingency planning can be guided using the report of this risk simulation. Second, special contingency analyses which take into account the nature of outages and their high correlation with a particular device failure are discussed. These analyses were conducted an real systems within the US power grid. Clearly, the special nature of these failures were not part of the typical contingency plans at utility planning departments. Finally, to better prepare utilities´ operators, they describe training simulations to establish restoration procedures. The contingency cases that were analyzed using offline analytical programs are input in training simulators so that operators can elaborate restoration procedures and avoid lasting interruptions