ALLENTOWN, Pa., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- PPL Corp. (NYSE: PPL) confirmed
this morning that its 3.5 million delivery customers experienced no
electricity service interruptions in central and eastern Pennsylvania,
Montana, Latin America and the United Kingdom as a result of the Y2K
changeovers related to the leap year phenomenon.
(Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19981015/PHTH025 )
Traditionally, computers have had leap year trouble registering Feb. 29,
often treating it as March 1 or treating March 1 as "Feb. 30." Due to certain
mathematical quirks peculiar to the leap year 2000, there were greater risks
this year for computer programming errors than in leap years past.
"At PPL we devoted more than 140,000 hours of preparation for Y2K over
almost four years," said Bill Whitehead, PPL's manager of transmission and
distribution operations. "We were well prepared for the New Year's Eve Y2K
changeover, and we anticipated the leap year phenomenon at that time. We
really weren't expecting any problems the past two nights. We had our normal
after-hours personnel along with some extra help just at our main Transmission
and Control Center outside of Allentown. We were also in touch with the
regional electricity interconnection."
The leap year changeovers occurred without incident at any of the PPL
companies. PPL's electricity distribution companies in the United Kingdom,
Chile and Bolivia all reported no outages related to the leap year
changeovers. In addition, PPL's natural gas delivery business, PPL Gas
Utilities, also successfully made the transition without any leap year
problems.
Based in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corp. is a FORTUNE 500(R) company that
delivers electricity and natural gas to more than 1.3 million customers in
Pennsylvania; sells wholesale energy in 43 U.S. states and Canada; generates
electricity at power plants in Pennsylvania, Maine and Montana; delivers
electricity to 1.4 million customers in southwest Britain; and delivers
electricity to more than 800,000 customers in Chile, Bolivia and El Salvador.
*Visit PPL's dedicated media web site at http://www.pplnewsroom.com for
additional news and background about PPL Corp.
SOURCE PPL Corp.
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Related links:
http://www.pplnewsroom.com
Photo Notes:
NewsCom:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19981015/PHTH025
PRN Photo Desk, 888-776-6555 or 201-369-3467
CONTACT:
George Biechler of PPL, 610-774-5997, or Fax,
610-774-5281
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