However, if the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) is to be believed there is nothing to worry about. For once, it seems to have things under control, promising that the millennium's New Year celebrations will not be forced under a candle-light.

While the Western Power Grid has embarked upon a major system upgradation exercise to ensure that all the four states - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Madhya Pradesh are not paralysed by the bug, the MSEB has initiated `PRISM' (project for integrated software for MSEB) estimated at Rs 40 crore.

The idea is to take care of the Y2K bug as also streamline the entire system. The software handling capacity of the load despatch centres (LCD) - also known as the nerve centres - are being upgraded in all the states on priority. Likewise, the hardware capacity of the LCD is being upgraded.

In Maharashtra, the upgradation programme not only involves upgradation of the two major load despatch centres (LDC) at Kalwa and Ambazari but also the upgadation of the software for LT (low tension) and HT (high tension) consumers.

A high-level Y2K committee has been formed to ensure technology upgradation, integration and improve the functioning of the electricity board. Two officers of MSEB, Pune are closely involved with the PRISM project.

While a major portion of the software development takes place in Mumbai for taking care of the Y2k bug, the problem in Pune mainly involves: ensuring that the billing systems do not go haywire in the year 2000 including billing for LT and HT consumers.

Pune has over LT 7.5 lakh consumers, including Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, and over 900 HT consumers. Pune has around 5.5 lakh consumers in the surrounding areas. The LT billing software has already been completed while the HT billing software is expected to be completed by September end.

The computer division of MSEB here has already embarked upon converting the platform from cobol to oracle. Oraclecan handles a larger database in a more effective manner making it easier to extract information while the existing cobol platform requires separate programmes to generate simple information and thereby is more time-consuming. The work of changing cobol to oracle is scheduled to be completed in September.

Energy migration outside the State (MSEB sells power to Tamil Nadu) involves ensuring that the mainframe machines where the application sofware runs, are Y2k compliant.

Parallel runs will be held in October for processing data in the new platform and to iron out teething problems. This will ensure that the system does not get infected by the Y2K bug.