WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Utilities must work harder and faster to fend off the blackouts and brownouts that appear virtually inevitable because of millennium computer bugs, a Senate panel is warning the industry.
"Quite honestly, I think we're no longer at the point of asking whether or not there will be any power disruptions, but we are now forced to ask how severe the disruptions are going to be," Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said Friday.
A special Senate panel on potential Year 2000 computer and microchip meltdowns focused its first hearing on electric utilities because, Dodd said, "If we don't have power to generate electricity, everything else is moot."
With 567 days to the next century, senators said prospects are slim of fixing all of the power grid's hundreds of millions of chips, microprocessors, computer programs and other technologies that will be stumped by the digits 00.
Committee Chairman Robert Bennett said he felt there was a 40 percent chance of a major regional blackout -- "That is moving down from a 50 percent estimate."
The Utah Republican said his office surveyed 10 of the nation's largest electric, oil and gas utilities, and found their preparations to ward off year 2000 bugs were lagging.
"Based on the results of this survey, I am genuinely concerned about the very real prospects of power shortages as a consequence of the millennial date change," Bennett said.
Only two of the 10 utilities had finished an assessment of their automated systems, which is an early step in the preparation process, he said. "One firm did not even know how many lines of computer code it had," he said, and none had completed a Year 2000 contingency plan.
The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees much of the nation's power grid and natural gas pipeline system, said the agency lacks authority to force utilities to make preparations, or to report on their efforts.
"The state of Year 2000 readiness of the utility industry is largely unknown," FERC chair James Hoecker said.
"There is a need to identify what effect a failed computer, computer software program, or embedded microprocessor would have on the production or delivery of electricity, gas and oil," Hoecker said.
After the hearing, Bennett said Congress may need to move this summer on legislation to give FERC and other agencies more access to company information and to ease anti-trust barriers to cooperation among companies on Year 2000 plans.
"If it turns out there are artificial barriers to the collection of information or cooperation among utilities, then I think we should move," he told Reuters. "But I don't think the government can order a company to become Year 2000 compliant, or try to punish them if they are not."
The head of an industry group formed in the late 1960s to try to ensure reliability of the nation's power grid said there was an "extremely low" chance for a widespread system failure.
"Year 2000 poses the threat that common mode failures...or the coincident loss of multiple facilities could result in stressing the electric system to the point of a cascading outage over a large area," said Michehl Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC).
"I must stress this possibility is extremely low, but conceivable," Gent said.
The Clinton administration has asked NERC to oversee utilities' millennium bug protections, efforts that Gent said must be coordinated throughout the energy sector.
"An individual electric utility that invests tens of millions of dollars in solving Year 2000 problems could be affected in a major way by neighboring systems that have not been as diligent," he said.
NERC is assessing the industry's readiness, and is to submit a report to the Energy Department next July.