Note: If you are an Information Systems Professional looking for ways to cure millenium bugs in your information systems, you will NOT find them on this web page. This page is designed to help YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES survive the Y2K problem, natural disasters, and terrorist activity that might disrupt the national infrastructure.

Possible Effect of the Y2K or Millenium Problem on the Electricity Generating Power Industry

Contact Info

Links to other Y2K Websites

Weather

Economics and Y2K

Why WISE people are acting NOW

We do not need a Y2K problem to disrupt the electric power system, and with it, our way of life. The weather caused the following problems:

• On September 15, 1999, Hurricane Floyd hit the east coast of North Carolina and Virginia. By the time it hit the eastern half of Maryland, and all of Delaware and New Jersey, it had been downgraded to a Tropical Storm. Even in its weakened state, it still knocked out electrical power to approximately 120,000 Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) customers in Anne Arundel, Prince Georges, Montgomery, Howard, and Baltimore Counties. About 40 percent of these customers were in Anne Arundel County. Five days later, 43,000 customers were STILL without power. Downed trees and power lines closed 40 roads just in Anne Arundel County.
  
• On May 26, 1999, 10,000 Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) customers in Prince Georges and Anne Arundel Counties, Maryland lost electricity.
  
• On May 24, 1999 a spring thunder, rain, and wind storm hit Baltimore, Maryland and knocked out electric power to 49,000 customers.
  
• On January 15, 1999 a winter storm of ice and freezing rain hit Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. This storm caused so many tree limbs and branches to fall, or be blown against power lines and substations, that 450,000 PEPCO customers lost electric power.
  Ten hours later, 400,000 of them were still without power. Most of these were in Montgomery County, Maryland.
  Twelve hours later 173,000 were still without power. It was not until January 20, FIVE DAYS LATER, that the last few hundred customers in Montgomery County regained their electric power.
  
• This same January 15th. storm caused 113,000 VEPCO customers to lose power.
  
• This same storm also caused 110,000 BGE customers in Maryland to lose power.
  Ten hours later, 100,000 BGE customers were still without power.
• On December 24, 1998 a winter snow and ice storm caused electric power outages to 260,000 customers in the western portion of Virginia, USA.
  FOUR DAYS later 107,000 customers were still without power.
  SIX DAYS after the storm 40,000 customers were still without power.
  SEVEN DAYS after the storm 30,000 customers WERE STILL without power.
  A WHOPPING TEN DAYS after the storm, 10,000 customers WERE STILL without power.
  THREE people DIED of Hypothermia!
• During the fall of 1998, Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys, and the coast of Gulf Coast of Mississippi. This Hurricane damaged several HUNDRED THOUSAND structures leaving five MILLION TONS of debris in its wake. One MILLION people lost electric power and 700,000 lost their water supply!
• On January 31, 1998, 250,000 customers in eastern Tennesee, West Virginia, and North Carolina lost power from a storm that delivered 48 inches of snow! This storm caused nine deaths.
• During the winter of 1997-1998, in what was called the "Storm of the Century" millions of customers south of Montreal, Canada lost electrical power.
  80,000 of them were without it for a WHOPPING 26 DAYS before it was finally restored!
• During the winter of 1997-1998 a SINGLE snow and ice storm took down 22,000 utility poles in New York state.
• On March 31, 1997, 7600 Customers of BGE in Maryland lost power due to a snow and ice storm. Over 3000 of them were still without power that night.

Think about it.
Wouldn't it make sense to take the steps NOW to protect your family against a future catastrophe?

The faith in economic systems is thin and the system is prone to disruption from small defects. The problem arises when one realizes that if even a small number of checks do not go through, people and companies will refuse to honor checks. This makes it very difficult for the coal mining companies to pay their employees, for the railroads to pay their employees, for the trucking and shipping companies to pay their employees, and for the local power companies to pay their employees, etc. How long will the people working for these companies continue to work if they do not get paid? How long will your local power company be able to run its generators if it cannot get fuel? Approximately 80% of the electricity generated in the United States and Canada comes from coal-fired power plants and many of the reserve or backup plants are oil or natural gas-powered. The result of even sporadic failures in the financial markets could be a significant decrease in the amount of electric power available.

Why WISE people are acting NOW:

A single sixty Watt photovoltaic module will produce enough energy during a winter day to run a minimal lighting system of a few small fluorescent lamps for a few hours that night. Think for a minute about what would it take to put a SINGLE sixty Watt photovoltaic module on each of seventy-five million United States homes? 75,000,000 x 60 Watts = 4,500,000,000 Watts of modules. This is 4.5 BILLION Watts. If all the photovoltaic module factories in the ENTIRE WORLD ran at full capacity for one year, they could produce only about one hundred fifty million Watts of modules. It would take them THIRTY YEARS to produce 4.5 Billion Watts of modules. This means that only three percent of these homes could actually get a module. (Wise people are buying their modules now.)

As bad as this is, it gets worse. Two-thirds of all the modules manufactured in the United States, are exported to foreign countries. (In a few months, those modules manufactured in foreign countries will probably remain there.) (Wise people are buying their modules now.) Those people who want to run more than a minimal lighting system, like a radio, television set, and video cassette recorder, will require several modules. This means that even fewer homes will be able to get any modules. (Wise people are buying their modules now.) Those people who want to run their refrigerator will have to buy several times as many ADDITIONAL modules. This means that even FEWER homes will get ANY modules. (WISE people are buying their modules NOW.) The chance of your being able to buy a solar module when Y2K hits is very low. And, if you are one of the few lucky people able to find one for sale, you will probably find the cost to be very high. (WISE PEOPLE ARE BUYING THEIR MODULES NOW.) You are wise, otherwise you would not be reading this. BUY YOUR MODULES NOW!

Contact Information:

Our Addresses:

U.S. Mail: Segal's Solar Systems, Inc., 3357 Cranberry South, Laurel, MD 20724-2419

Electronic Mail: solar@smart.net

Our Phone Number: 301-776-8946

Links to other Y2K or Millenium Educational Websites

If you want to read more educational websites which can tell you about the Y2K or Millenium Problem, check out some of the following websites:

U.S. Government Accounting Office Information On the Y2K Problem

This section is not yet finished. Please add this URL to your Explorer Favorites or Netscape Bookmarks and return during October of 1999. Thank you.

This page was last updated on September 29, 1999
by Barry Jay Segal.