At stake in this huge effort is the entire North American power grid, some half a million miles of high-voltage transmission lines that carry electricity from about 10,200 power plants to 274 million Americans and 31 million Canadians. The task of keeping this vast, interconnected network running is daunting even if the Y2K bug is taken out of the picture, which is the main reason power company officials hasten to add that there will almost certainly be blackouts New Years Day. Tyndall, like many of his colleagues, said one of the utilities' biggest fears now is that people will assume any power outages January 1 are linked to Y2K computer failures. There will be outages. Outages occur normally on any given day and we keep crews on call around the clock to deal with them.
New Year is notorious for roughing up the power grid.
We don't want people to panic or jump to conclusions, but to call us. Drunken drivers plowing into power poles and bullets fired at transformers and ceramic insulators by enthusiastic revelers are among the many hazards utility crews face that night. Detroit, like many U.S. cities, has been plagued in recent years by gunfire at midnight. This year, the city launched a campaign to ring in the New Year with bells instead of guns. Sometimes the bullets hit our equipment on the way up, sometimes on the way back down.