The Ft Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel had a fairly good article in yesterdays paper. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Most of what they have printed has been garbage. You can see the story here

Jan. 1, 2000: Lights Out?

They had a sidebar that is not in the internet edition...

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How ready are we?

Here's how far along some of the states biggest utilities are in fixing and testing their computer systems for the year 2000, and when they expect to be done. Figures are from January.

Utility	% completed	Comp date
FPL	78%	10/99
Florida Power group	57%	9/30/99
Gulf Power	55%	6/1/99
Florida Public Utilities Co.	80%	7/1/99
Tampa Electric	85%	9/1/99
Gainsville Regional Utilities	45%	6/30/99
Lakeland Electric and Water	16%	6/1/99
Orlando Utilities Commission	40%	6/30/99
Seminole Electric	50%	6/1/99
City of Tallahassee	25%	6/30/99

My big question, is how can some of these companies be 16%, 25% and 40% completed, but have "completion dates" earlier then companies that are 78% and 85% done? I realize they may have smaller systems to remediate, but it looks pretty fishy to me.....

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Answers

Online2Much, another question which comes to my mind is, "Are these estimated completion percentages for mission-critical systems only, or for all systems?" Without knowing how each utility in the graph is defining their completion percentages, we can't really make comparisons about the estimated finish dates. In the SEC Year 2000 statements, most of the publicly traded utilities stated the estimates were for mission critical systems only, but there were a couple which spoke of a complete systems remediation. (Also, NERC specifys the data it collects is for mission critical systems.) We don't know from the Sun Sentinel article or the sidebar graph if the municipals and smaller utilities are estimating in the same way or not, and a full system remediation would take longer than mission critical systems only.

Enough to make you gnash your teeth, isn't it? Without baseline standards, trying to decipher data is a real pain. I also noted the line, "Florida's largest utilities are all but done with the inventory and the assessment.." The phrase "all but done" does not equal "Done", nor did the article mention anything about where the smaller utilities are in inventory and assessment.

If we make the *assumption* that the percentages are all for mission critical systems only, and play the NERC game of averages, then the ten Florida utilities in the graph are estimated to have an aggregate "fix" of 53% of their critical systems. So after working since 1997, when the article says oversight agencies began pressing for statistics, the utilities are an average of half done -- with ten months left to go, not counting weekends, vacation days, sick days, etc. Most readers here know I personally think the averaging system doesn't tell us much, but I thought I'd give people a sample of how NERC would look at the graph.

You're right about the information being better than most Y2K pieces, even if we can't come to any definite answers. At least the title of the news article is asking the right question!

-- Anonymous, March 01, 1999

Dear 2Much,

Great data. Made me snoop a bit.

The above data came from the Florida Public Service Commission and is available to the public. The original data gives the percent completion on inventory, assessment, ..etc. There is similar data on the status of the gas and telecommunication industries. This data is presented in a way where it can be compared the SEC filings and NERC reports.

Here is the url: http://www2.scri.net/psc/y2ksum2.html

-- Anonymous, March 02, 1999

Thanks Online2Much, Bonnie, and Steven. I have reported this information to the people that I report to. I wonder if we can find any more statistics...

I have been alarmed by the lack of computer modeling done on Y2K. I understand that there are few "good" statistics, but I sure wonder what we could "see" if we did a little modeling.

-- Anonymous, March 02, 1999

This brings up a question I have: How much electricity is normally being generated? I ask because I know that most of Florida is part of the FRCC and is a net energy importer (2411MW for a normal transfer load as of late 1997, see http://www.yardeni.com/public/nerccht.pdf). Is 2411MW a large amount of the FRCC's usage?

And for someone asking for a model, there is a slanted one at http://www.y2knewswire.com/y2kengine.htm . I say slanted, but I might be wrong. The problem is that it assumes all-or-nothing failures and adds an overall complicating failure rate rather than allowing for more complex failure patterns. A more sophisticated model could be constructed using simulation. The user would input the probabilities of different events, their impacts on other sectors, and then sample the model repeatedly and see what it predicts in the aggregate.

-- Anonymous, March 06, 1999