Genesis Energy left some customers without power
Genesis Energy, a New Zealand power company, left some of their pre-pay customers without electricity. Notably, this was a weekend during which it was also snowing and hailing.
Genesis says a pre-paid power account cannot be shut off over the weekend and instead customers just go into debt.
But a computer error has made it impossible for customers nationwide to top up their accounts over the weekend, so at 8am Monday some were cut off without warning.
(From TVNZ)
Cutting off a customer’s power is pretty significant, particularly during cold weather conditions. And on weekends, when customers may not have a chance to recharge their account balance. That is obviously, why company spokespeople seemed convinced that such a thing would not happen.
Software flaw apparently prevented tornado warning alerts
As reported recently by The Coloradoan, a Fort Collins computer system failed to alert tens of thousands of people and businesses about a tornado warning earlier this week:
An estimated 100,000 phone numbers and e-mail addresses did not receive the notification from the city that would have alerted those in the south-central part of the city.
A software error has since been identified:
Officials said Wednesday the system identifies geographic areas to be notified but was unable to deliver the warnings when the areas overlapped.
Kimberly Culp, a spokeswoman for the Larimer Emergency Telephone Authority, said an employee entering data for the areas created the overlap, but the computer didn’t issue an error message until the worker tried to send out the alert and failed.
She said the worker tried to fix the mistake but by the time officials figured out the problem there was no need to send an alert anymore.
The system was developed by Glendale, Calif.-based Everbridge Inc. Larimer County agencies paid $150,000 to start the system plus $95,000 a year to be able to send out an unlimited number of alerts.
Culp said the county is working with Everbridge to make sure the computers send an error message as soon as a worker enters overlapping data.
It sounds like there are least one of two issues here:
- The software does not properly combine overlapping geographic regions.
- No error message is displayed to inform the user about a data input problem.
Nothing much happened here, this time. The issue is of course a tricky one though. As this example showed, by the time the problem was discovered, it was too late and there was basically no need any longer for an alert. There is little room for delays here.
