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Doug Bechtel
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There are many things that have been stacking up around here that we need to talk about. I think the most important is that winter is coming and we need to be prepared for the power outages that will inevitably follow. Now is a good time to make sure that your generator works (if you have one). It's time to check your emergency supplies (flashlights, candles, spare water and what have you). The scientists tell us that El Niño will bring a warm, dry winter with lots of wind, but, looking at our fall so far, it might be a cool, wet winter with lots of wind. The advantage of El Niño is that we can blame everything on it and it can't talk back to us. I wonder how I can blame my budget deficit on El Niño.
Speaking of power outages, we have a power outage scheduled from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. on Friday, October 24th. The way I look at it, the outage is really very late Thursday night since I will be asleep when it happens. Each fall we have an outage like this while we make some repairs to our system before the winter hits. So, if you need to get up Friday morning to catch a ferry or something, set a clock that either has a battery backup or winds up.
On a more interesting note, one of our members asked me a couple of months ago how our computers are preparing for the year 2000. For those who haven't been following it, most computers will not be able to tell the difference between the year 1900 and the year 2000. Imagine how upset we would be if we thought you hadn't paid your electric bill since 1900! We started looking for new computer software about a year and a half ago for a different reason - the programs we have been using date back to 1981 and don't provide the kind of flexibility we will need in a competitive future. As we looked for new software, we insured that the new programs we would be using were all year 2000 compliant. BPA also assures me that they will be ready before 2000 arrives. We will have to wait and see what happens, but I think we are in pretty good shape.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, a company announced the ability to use powerlines to allow people to have high speed access to the Internet. Since that announcement, several people have phoned and mailed me copies of newspaper articles and press releases. I have had e-mail messages from as far away as Russia asking if we were going to be involved in this. The answer is that it is still too early to say, but we continue to follow the development of this technology. Interestingly, we are already using our powerlines to send messages to our load management receivers. In the past, we have tested systems that use our powerlines for reading electric meters and reporting power outages. This is a area of very rapidly evolving technology and OPALCO is going to stay on top of what is happening.
Now, if I can just figure out how El Niño caused my budget deficit . . .
Doug Bechtel
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