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SCADA in power grid
this is from http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/2439
Gary North's Y2K Links and Forums
Summary and Comments
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Category: Power_Grid
Date: 1998-08-29 13:57:30
Subject: The Convenient Lie:
Link: http://y2ktimebomb.com/PP/RC/dm9834.htm
Comment: On August 27, I spoke before a meeting of 500
people -- 5% of a local town. At that meeting,
representatives of several industries spoke:
banking, telephone, electrical power.
When pressed by someone in the audience, the
representative of the power company insisted they
could run the entire company on manual systems
without compliant computers. Forget about
noncompliant chips. The company can do it manually.
I asked him straight: Can they run the SCADA
(supervisory control and data acquisition) system
without telecommunications? That's the computerized
system that tells them how much power is running
through the lines. "Yes," he said.
A week before I had been told by an engineer with a
large urban power company that without SCADA, they
would fry the lines permanently. "There is no way
we could run the system manually."
I guess engineers don't agree.
I told the audience this:
"No system can be switched to pre-computer manual
operations without training. Any outfit that claims
that it can be run manually had better have a
highly trained technical staff to take over in
2000. Does the outfit have a training manual? How
much training money has it budgeted?"
Any outfit that does not have the staff being
trained right now is lying when it says that it can
be run manually. It cannot be run manually by
phantom workers. The men who knew how to run it
manually were fired 30 years ago. The manual
systems were replaced. The industry did not spend
hundreds of billions of dollars on computerization
so as to have two separate operation systems. They
spent the money to get rid of manual systems.
Any time you hear some representative tell you his
public utility can be run manually, ask five
questions:
1. How many trained personnel do you need,
including substitutes, to run your system manually?
2. How many are currently undergoing training for
this task, and how many have finished it?
3. May I come in and see your training manual that
you use to train these people?
4. How much money has your company budgeted to
train this staff?
5. How much has already been spent?
You must call their bluff. They're lying. They have
no intention of trying to run anything manually.
It's just a PR ploy. It's Monica Lewinsky syndrome.
Nobody suffers any consequences for lying to the
public.
But can't they be sued for lying, i.e., misleading
the public? Not if all companies in the industry
collapse for the same reason. They will share the
blame, or pass it on to a higher authority: "An act
of God."
When you catch one of them in a lie this big, you
can rest assured: he knows that it can't be fixed
by anyone, so he knows he can't be successfully
sued.
Training to convert to manual systems won't work,
of course. The power industry can't be run
manually, and it's too late to fix the code.
Besides, nobody in the industry will pay any
attention to such warnings. But at least it lets
the industry know that you don't believe the lie
any more.
Dick Mills, who is a public optimist about the
power grid, recently issued a warning to the
industry: begin contingency planning. This includes
training. This is the best advice that anyone could
give the power industry -- not because the advice
could work at this late date, but because it's time
to call their bluff.
This is from Westergaard's site.
* * * * * * * * *
. . . Isn't there already a national emergency plan
in place for such as critical infrastructure such
as power? No, not to my knowledge. Please write and
tell me if I'm wrong.
Never before, has there been a threat to the power
system of such sweeping scope and magnitude as Y2K.
There was no need for a national electric-power
emergency plan. Prudence requires that we have such
a plan, not only for Y2K but also for other future
threats.
I foresee that this plan will need to span
national, state, local, public, private, utility
and non-utility boundaries. How might we accomplish
that? I've been told that existing presidential
executive orders allow the entire industry to be
nationalized at the stroke of a pen in case of
emergency. Thus the authority exists, but it will
do no good unless there are plans and trained
organizations in place to use it effectively.
There are numerous mitigating possibilities to be
considered. That is true of not only to electric
power but also to all industries and all facets of
the Y2K problem. . . .
It is already too late to finish Y2K remediation
for many companies, but it is not too late for
disaster preparations. To actually get practical
and practiced disaster preparedness plans in place,
we must accomplish three things. I see these three
as my working goals. I hope you do the same. . . .
We must plan, train, and practice the
implementation of emergency procedures. Those are
key elements of all emergency services like fire
and police. In the Y2K case, we have to combine
strangers into teams, invent new roles, and
practice. That takes time.
Link: http://y2ktimebomb.com/PP/RC/dm9834.htm
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