Within power companies across the United States, accountants are battling reliability and security engineers for dominance. At issue is whether the accountant's desire -- a trickled down echo of 'senior exec's commands -- to increase utility firms' profitablity via cost cutting is more desirable than building redundancy and robustness into the power network. Additionally, there's the issue of securing SCADA systems (Secure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition ) which are the command and control computer networks for plant operations.
Reliability and redundancy, along with properly securing SCADA, costs money -- in both equipment and expertise. Power utility firms, scrambling to meet or exceed Wall Street's expectations, are looking to reduce or eliminate expenses as a short-term (is there any other sort?) tweak for increasing profits.
Of course, the 'senior execs' and their accountant minions are winning this war decisively. Unfortunately for those of us who use electricity this means there's an increased risk of blackouts and brownouts due to a staggering range of events -- from fallen trees which should have been trimmed back from power lines through the latest Win32 virus all the way to terrorist action.
The long list of possibles, coupled with the utilites' unwillingness to properly maintain the grid, makes it almost a certainty another large-scale blackout is on order for the summer of 2004.
The government, through the Dept. of Homeland Sec, has been applying a chimera of pressure to utilities to address the issue but this give and take is mostly show biz -- DHS 'recommends' action but doesn't follow-up, utilties claim to have fixed problems but provide no, or fabricated, proof.
Can capital be trusted to run fundamental systems such as water and power? We're getting our answer.
Stock up on candles and bottled water.
.d.