What About Electric Coops?

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My electric company is Sam Houston Electric Cooperative. It serves a rural area that begins about 60 miles north of Houston. They produce no electricity on their own. They buy from surrounding areas. On their web site they say they will have their billing, lines, etc. compliant. They they say they have sent a letter asking about 2000 complance to those companies they buy electriity from and will send another letter in Dec., 1998. A copy of the letter is there, but there is NO information as to what they have found out. I sent an e-mail asking for a list of the companies they buy energy from. That was several days ago and I have received no answer. Are electric coops in a worse situation that companies that produce their own power?

-- Anonymous, November 21, 1998

Answers

You might want to find out who their power suppliers are and then check the SEC 10Q reports on each supplier.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 1998

Marcella, there is usually a customer service number or business office number on your electric bill. I'd call during a week day and ask them in person for the names of the utilities they consistently buy power from. Steve's suggestion is a very good one. Obviously electric coops are dependent on other utilities being not only up and running, but able to produce enough energy to sell. In this sense, your coop is in a worse situation than power generators, because having a product to sell is dependent on others and outside their control. (Rather like a grocery store who must get their stock from outside sources.)

Since all the electric utility SEC filings I've read stipulate that there can be no guarantees of reliability due to the unknowns concerning their own suppliers, you might want to consider making some preparations for alternate heating/cooking energy, just in case.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 1998


Electric Co-ops are mostly for distribution. A few generate power, but most just buy power. Therefore, they are subject to major vendor vulnerability in this area. Unfortunately, in many cases, it is hard for the Co-ops to get good information from their vendor(s). Are Co-ops making contingency plans for a "second" source of power? I don't know. I do know that the Co-ops Y2K problems are more closely akin to the problems that a "normal" business will experience, i.e. admin systems, and non-power vendor problems. Distribution per se, is not a complex Y2K issue. Yes, SCADA systems are used to control substations and switches. But these systems can be manually manipulated easily. The power might go down, but it won't stay down due to distribution type SCADA issues. In my understanding, distribution SCADA systems *separate* units of distribution lines. These units are easily isolated and fixed on failure. In contrast, transmission SCADA systems form the backbone of the interconnected grid. Although, they operate using same principles, transmission SCADA systems *aggregate* smaller grids and are vulnerable to failure in any one of the aggregated grids. (Wow - how did it get here on a question about co-ops?) Anyway, the short of it is that if electric co-ops fix their billing systems and other standard business related Y2K issues, their infrastructure will probably be just fine. The question is, "Will they have any electricity to deliver?"

-- Anonymous, November 24, 1998

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