I was interested in a recent article which is printed at the National Rural Electric Site: http://www.nreca.org/y2k/senateflap.html

NRECA, which represents over 1000 consumer-owned utilities, providing electrice service to 32 million people in 46 states, was a little miffed at the recent Senate Report. The report said that the small rural utilities were at greater risk than the larger ones and that they were further behind in their assessment and remediation efforts.

I called the NRECA and talked to Eleanor Miller (703) 907-5721. I asked her what was up. How come the Senate seems to think the rural utilities are posing the greatest threat to electricity. Ms. Miller said the NRECA was baffled. She said that all of the members had been reporting as required and that they were meeting the deadlines. She also mentioned that the Senate quoted a very old survey. At that time, (late summer/early fall '98) a survey had been mailed to the rural utilites and some of them had mistakenly tossed it out, not realizing they were going to be judged by their responses. She said that the NERC must have just assumed that no response meant not working on the problem. Even so, she indicated that much newer and more accurate information was available. Clearly, they are puzzled why the Senate report is inaccurate with regard to their data.

I can't help but wonder what other inaccuracies may exist in these reports. Fortunately, this news seems to show the report should have been more positive when it comes to the preparadeness of utilities whereas the inaccuracies sited in several DOD reports slanted toward being a little too positive.

-- Anonymous, March 03, 1999

Answers

Meg, this is a great post. I hope this news can get to those rural folks who might be concerned.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Last Sunday on Face the Nation, Senator Bennett mentioned that the NRECA had questioned the comment about the rural utilities. He said that his response to them was "well, we were just using the data that THEY gave us. If there is more accurate data, they need to give it to us'.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Meg,

More news :

DOE: Electricity grid in "good shape" for Y2K By Reuters Special to CNET News.com March 3, 1999, 12:10 p.m. PT

U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the nation won't experience electrical brownouts on New Year's Day 2000 due to computer problems at utilities.

A new report from a special Senate committee said there could be power outages because the computers of electricity suppliers, especially smaller ones in rural areas, might confuse the last "00" digits in 2000 as the year 1900.

"I am confident that there will be no power failures with small power companies [or] big power companies," Richardson said in a speech at the National Press Club.

"Our electricity grid is in good shape to meet this [computer] challenge," he said.

Richardson urged utilities to explain the computer problem to their customers and what is being done to correct it, so there won't be a public panic.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association said the Senate report contained misleading information and that electric cooperatives are on schedule for fixing any computer problems.

"We expect to deliver the same reliable service in the year 2000 that we deliver now," the group said.

Richardson also said there was no need for Americans to line up at gasoline stations this December 31 to fill their automobile tanks in case of a disruption in fuel supplies.

"Don't do that. We're going to make it. I think the nation is prepared to deal with this [computer] problem," he said.

The Senate report warned there could be a disruption in trade with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, which are the two biggest crude oil suppliers to the U.S. market, because those countries may not be able to address the computer glitch in time.

The American Petroleum Institute said the latest survey of oil and natural gas companies shows that most firms are in the final stages of updating their computer programs and that 94 percent of the energy companies will complete their work by September 30.

The trade group criticized the Senate report for not containing the latest publicly available data on the readiness of oil and natural gas companies. "The nation should not be alarmed by information that is not current," the API said.

This will clear the sky ?

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Menno, I apologize for the American-centric response that follows - it may apply to your situation in the Netherlands, maybe not.

I think the Senate report may have "mischaracterized" the issue a bit with smaller electric utilities, but the gist of the Senate remarks were not entirely off the mark, based on my experience with some of these smaller companies.

NRECA represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 rural electric coops. The American Public Power Association (APPA) represents around 2000 municipal power agencies, which operate under the auspices of a local city or town government (don't quote me on either number; I just don't have the time to run down exact stats right now).

Some rural electric coops were as proactive as their investor-owned utility (IOU) counterparts in dealing with Y2k. A good example of this is Basin Electric Power Coop (www.bepc.com). However, most REC's lagged the rest of the industry by a significant margin in terms of getting started. I spoke at NRECA's annual IT manager's conference in mid-1998, and most of the companies attending were just getting started with (or hadn't started)Y2k programs at that time. Now, I understand and appreciate that REC's, for the most part, simply don't have as much automation exposure as larger IOU's, but NRECA's statement following release of the Senate report seems rather reactionary to the criticism rather than an acknowlegement of the challenges that lay ahead. That's the postion I would have taken had I written the response.

OK, now onto public power. If REC's, as a whole, were late in coming to the Y2k party, many public power providers were still driving around the block trying to find the location of the Y2k party as of late last year. Again, this is a generalization and is not meant to be reflective of all public power organizations, and there are certainly exceptions (Springfield, Mo. City Utilities and Los Angeles Depart of Water and Power come immediately to mind).

The fact of the matter remains that smaller electric companies continue to be at greater risk from Y2k impact than do their IOU counterparts, for three basic reasons:

• They were late getting engaged in the issue
• For the most part, these types of electric entities are very dependent on upstream electricity providers.
• Public power entities are at the mercy of their local government politicians in terms of funding and resources to analyze and remediate (where necessary) the problem. Remember, politicians on a local level hate to increase taxes for any reason.

I'm getting very tired of industry associations of all stripes (not just electric) making excuses for their poor Y2k performing memberships. This is probably the strongest statement I've made on the issue of Y2k in the electric industry in awhile, and it will no doubt be challenged by many. But the fact remains that there are far too many of the smaller companies who feel that Y2k is not an issue for them, and haven't put forth more than a token effort at investigating and dealing with the problem.

I think that's the context in which the Senate report conclusions on smaller electric companies should be framed.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

By the way, I grabbed the Senate report in Adobe .pdf format, and excerpted the section that was relevant to the electric industry. The original "utilities" section of the report also included gas, oil, water, and wastewater treatment. The excerpted portion has been placed on the euy2k.com website, and can be downloaded at:

www.euy2k.com/elecutil.pdf

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Thanks for doing this Rick. Excellent. I like the attention that the report gave to educating the public on the issue. I found it striking that the report said this regarding the NERC report:

"The data presented in the NERC report do not seem to support the optimistic tone contained in the report's executive summary."

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

May I be so bold to add that there is no data, NERC or otherwise, to support the Senate's (and other's) contention that there will be isolated, short duration brown outs. I would like a Senator to describe events leading up to the brownout, including the device that the Senators knows will fail, the mode of failure, and why he/she thinks that it will not be remediated.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Meg - I forgot to say "thanks!" for your follow through with NRECA - it helps all of us when someone takes the initiative to do something like that!

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

RE: Senate document.

Seems like page 20 of the Utilities section should be expanded into about 50 pages!

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999

Great thread! Lots of good comments. I must admit that I was not very impressed with the technical savy of the Senate Report. I read the report to see why the executive summary expressed concerns about rural electrics. From the Exectutive Summary: Of greatest concern are approximately 1,000 small, rural electric utilities that may not have the resources to devote to Y2K compliance.

[May?? Is this just speculation? Exactly what we don't need more of...so on to the report]

The only thing I could find in the main body of the reports Utilities section that might be applicable to concerns with co-ops:

"Smaller firms with fewer resources are presumably further behind in their Y2K remediation efforts."

[Have I missed something here?? Is that the word...presumably???]

I think the co-ops have a legitimate beef here. I see no evidence of a decent assessment of the co-ops in this report, but I do see way to much speculation. I place much more credence in the assessment of the co-ops by all of you here that have researched them.

Rick, at least you have looked into it, so you have way more credibility with me on this issue than the report does. I don't believe the Senate investigators got off the couch....at least not from the window I'm looking in from....there may be other windows...;)

Regards, FactFinder

-- Anonymous, March 04, 1999