Public utilities and Nebraska

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How are the government-owned utilities doing, or likely to do? According to an article this Sunday in the Omaha paper, Nebraska is entirely dependent on "public" power providers, i.e. non-profits, who are only accountable to ratepayers through representatives.

The response to a detailed letter of inquiry I sent to Omaha Public Power District asking about their Y2K compliance contained only a couple of sentences of such bland generality that did not even distinguish between software and embedded system issues.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 1997

Answers

At some point in the future, even Nebraska will get wired into deregulation and competition issues. At that point, the power districts have no choice but to get into a more 'customer responsive' mode.

As far as Y2K in Nebraska - you were fortunate to get a response from OPPD. Most ElecCo's aren't even doing this much for residential customers, although a few are actually doing billing inserts and such on Y2K. It does not surprise me that their response did not differentiate between software, hardware, and firmware. Most of the general public wouldn't understand the distinction anyway.

Other Nebraska PPD's - NPPD is very heavily into Y2K issues. Their program manager, Rich Lomax, is on the leadership cutting edge of two significant industry initiatives; EPRI and NEI. NPPD is well into assessment, and has helped put the current nuclear industry embedded systems Y2K guidance document together. My feel is that NPPD is pretty well positioned.

As far as other government-owned (feds, states, muni's) utilities, it's much like the rest of the private industry. Some are farther along than others, and some haven't even recognized Y2K as a significant issue. The tale will be told in late January - there's another industry meeting sponsored by EPRI in late January. If there's a good crossection of representation from government owned electric companies, then I'll have a much better feel for it.

Any other comments are welcomed from those of you on the government side of the business (you know who you are!)... ;-)

-- Anonymous, December 31, 1997


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