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Keeping the power turned on Photo by Bob Pennell Power lines reach out west of White City, framing a Rogue Valley sunset. Power supply will be reliable, even as the new year dawns, say officials in charge of supplying the region's power. Pacific Power says it's prepared for year 2000 Editor's note : Fear and rumors abound as society readies for the year 2000. Today begins the second in a series of stories to explain how vital community systems work -- water, power, public safety, to name a few -- and what agencies and residents are doing to prepare for what emergencies might lie ahead. Tomorrow, a look at the growing interest in living off the power grid, as well as in generators in preparation for an extended power outage. BY MELISSA MARTIN At dozens of coal plants in Utah and Wyoming, electric power is generated and sent popping and crackling at the speed of light on transmission lines. The lines mostly parallel highways west of the Rocky Mountains, gathering from new sources, such as a coal plant or a dam along the way. The lines make a grid like a giant spider web, delivering electricity to 1.4 million customers in homes and businesses in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, California and Wyoming. But six months from now, in the dead of winter, when dates on embedded computer chips roll over to the year 2000, will electricity flow through those lines without interruption? Yes, says Bob Barry, general business manager for Pacific Power, the electricity provider in Southern Oregon. "We are expecting business as usual," Barry says. "We've spent the last three years making sure we don't have any problems." In that time frame, Pacific Power has been assessing its operating system, identifying the components that are at risk and making the necessary changes, says Bill Smithee, district operations manager in Medford. PacifiCorp has an all-encompassing system. There are 26 thermal generating units (coal plants in Wyoming, Utah and Washington) which produce 85 percent of the power used in the Pacific Northwest. Coal is burned to produce high-pressure steam that spins large turbine generators which produce electricity. The rest comes from 63 hydropower units, including four on the Rogue River. Additionally, PacifiCorp has 10,000 power plants and 1,160 substations -- 26 of those in the Rogue Valley -- spread across 152,000 square miles. Furthermore, PacifiCorp depends on 12 major and 40 minor interconnected utilities. "Most of the systems were fine, but some were not and we mitigated the problems. We reprogrammed, replaced and took some operations out of service," Smithee says. Pacific Power and its sister company Utah Power reached a milestone in Y2K preparations April 1 during a drill that all utilities in the Western grid participated in, Smithee says. They received a thumbs-up from the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, which works with all segments of the electric industry to keep the lights on in North America. "The utilities submit monthly surveys to NERC and one general overview is that 99 percent of the work that needs to be done on Y2K has been completed so far," says Eugene Gorzelnik, a spokesman for the Princeton, N.J.-based group. "It's a fairly good indication that we are there. But there is still work to do." There will be a similar drill on Sept. 9 -- which computers read as 9-9-99 -- in which Pacific Power and other electric companies will simulate the rollover from Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000. About half of Pacific Power systems already operate on clocks that have been prematurely advanced to 2000, Barry says. "We will have people at the substations taking readings and calling in the results," says David Register, Pacific Power's Year 2000 project manager in Portland. The participants in the drill included technicians at substations and employees in the field who responded to simulated outages without the luxury of a public telephone system. They also included employees in the Portland control center, where duties include monitoring minute-by-minute demands for energy and making sure the system has sufficient generation to meet the demands in each city. Bill Smithee stands beneath powerful transmission lines at the foot of Roxy Ann Peak, five miles away from the largest substation in Jackson County, where 500,000 volts of electricity end up after traveling from Midpoint near Boise, Idaho. It travels at a high voltage to reduce losses. The high voltage is reduced to 230,000 volts at a substation called Meridian and sent to a substation at Lone Pine, Smithee explains. The powerful transmission lines above his head provide the setting. There are two wooden poles, with H-shaped cross arms, towering 60 feet into the air. In the middle is the new kid on the block, a single steel pole, part of a series that the International Line Builders is installing as both a backup for the other two lines and a third line needed for a growing valley. "One of these lines alone could serve the whole valley," Smithee says. His eyes follow the lines as they enter the transmission station, a jungle of wires, insulators and tubular transformers that reduce the electricity to 115,000 and 69,000 volts. From Lone Pine, the electricity travels to 26 substations across the Rogue Valley, where it's reduced to distribution voltages of 21,000 and 12,000, he explains. Then at the transformer, located outside a home, it's reduced to a mere 120 to 240 volts. That allows Pacific Power's 68,000 customers in Jackson County to flip a switch and have lights, air conditioning and toasters. From Medford, 230,000-volt transmission lines carry the energy to portions of Southern Oregon and Northern California, part of a system that loops around the region. Keeping the pathway of power open and the lights on for customers is Pacific Power's daily goal, not just a concern of the new millennium. Crews check the 2,495 miles of distribution lines and 382.6 miles of transmission lines daily. Outages are more frequent in remote parts of the county, such as Butte Falls, Hyatt Lake and Union Creek. When there is a power outage, it's usually caused by wind, snow, lightning strikes, car accidents, falling trees or limbs or animals making contact with the wires. And because of the chance that embedded computer chips could be added to the problems list, Pacific Power will keep extra crews working around the clock during the critical period from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1. There will be added staff at control centers, power stations and critical substations, Register says. In addition, the utility company will place all available transmission facilities in service, bring additional generators on line, use older analog controlled units and limit switching, or transferring electric loads from one place to another. Pacific Power will have a command center on Dec. 31, collecting information from the six states it serves, the United Kingdom and Australia, where PacifiCorp serves 550,000 customers through Powercor. "We want to get information from ourselves as opposed to waiting for CNN or some other sources to give it to us," Register says. The Oregon Public Utilities Commission, which regulates local utilities, will take the same strategy with a command center in Salem, says Ron Karten, public information specialist. "We're going to start providing anecdotal reports from around the world at about 4 or 5 p.m.," Karten says. "Starting at midnight, we will have a crew getting information first from the electric utilities, then telecommunications and finally from natural gas utilities." Oregonians will have the advantage of watching the impact of the calendar roll over on the East Coast, officials say. Once curious customers watch the 11 o'clock news and see that the East Coast has survived, Register recommends they stop worrying and get some sleep. "If people would go to bed early on Dec. 31 and sleep late the next morning, they would wake up to find the world pretty much the same as it was when they went to bed." For more information, visit these Web sites: PacifiCorp's site, www.pacificorp.com , and the North American Electric Reliability Council site about the year 2000, www.nerc.com/~y2k/y2kplan.html Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA