There was an article in USA Today stating that 50% of utility companies were now compliant. Are 50% of utility companies finished with all their work or is this statement wrong or partially wrong?

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Answers

I wish there was an online link to this article so I could read the exact phrasing of the "50%" statement, but there have been other mentions of the 50% figure. In those, it was NOT that half of utilities are compliant. The 50% figure was in reference to average of systems now compliant -- a recent estimate based on the January NERC report saying that an average of 44% of utility systems were compliant.

It's already been demonstrated that this "average" doesn't show where individual utilities are in their remediation. For instance, some may be at 80% and others at 20% remediation, or anywhere in between. It also doesn't tell us if the systems which are compliant are the less complicated ones or the more complicated ones, the billing systems, or the control systems, etc. etc.

If USA Today did say that 50% of utility companies are compliant, then in my opinion, the reporter misunderstood the data and made a mistake. The utilities haven't reported any such thing to the SEC, nor have any announced full compliance yet that I am aware of. (Compliance of some individual generating units, yes. The entire utility, no.)

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999