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Left uncorrected, the Y2K problem could certainly wreak havoc. But for the most part, it is being corrected--at a collective cost estimated at anywhere from $50 billion to $600 billion. And that does not include what the Federal Government, which is dramatically and perhaps dangerously far behind in dealing with the Y2K issue, will spend (see box). However, the question of how widespread and serious Year 2000 failures will be remains a highly contentious one, often pitting those with a Year 2000 fix or book to sell against those with economic turf and reputations to defend.
This much is beginning to emerge from the fog of claims and counterclaims: while there are more than a few fatalists like May, most of the folks responsible for fixing the nation's electronic infrastructure actually think we're going to make it into the next millennium with only minor, if any, disruptions of vital services. There are technical reasons for their saying so, and probably a few public relations ones too. But the primary motivator may be that those companies have survival instincts of their own. "There's no way to overestimate how important this problem is to our customers and to us," says Michael Sansolo, senior vice president at the Food Marketing Institute, which represents most of the country's food wholesalers and retailers. "If the store's not open with food on the shelves, we don't make any money."
Many of the most dire Y2K scenarios are predicated on the assumption that the glitch will KO the country's electric utilities, turning out not only your lights but everything from the pumps at the gas station to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven. It's a plausible theory. The conventional and nuclear power plants that produce our electricity are all controlled to some degree--usually a large degree--by computers, and some of the suspect programs are etched directly onto silicon chips, making them even harder to find and fix. Some utilities have only recently begun the process of ferreting out potentially weak links in their delivery systems. Worse, since most utilities are linked to one another in gridlike fashion, there could be a domino effect, turning local failures into regional blackouts.
But there are reasons to believe that blackouts may be averted or, at worst, short-lived. Most of the larger utility companies have shifted their Y2K efforts into high gear and are speeding their repairs by sharing their findings through an online clearinghouse set up by the Electric Power Research Institute. The utilities are also under regulatory pressure. The Department of Energy has set a July 1 deadline for power companies to provide assurances that Year 2000 problems will be remedied in time.
The real assurance, however, may be that many utilities aren't counting on complete success. Rather, most plan to have extra people and manual work-arounds in place for critical systems, according to Jon Arnold, chief technology officer at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents the public utilities that generate more than three-quarters of the country's electricity. "People forget that electric utilities have equipment failures and outages all the time," says Arnold. He acknowledges that "it's not going to be a typical New Year's Eve" in 1999. But, he adds, Y2K "is not like a storm or a random failure. We know this one is coming."