When is the next NERC Report due out?

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

Answers

Who should care?

The survey methodology is badly flawed. I showed the data to my father, who has 30+ years experience in project management, he is an EXPERT in Project Management. He looked over the data, and agreed that it tells you nothing about where how far along the utilities industry is in fixing the Y2K problem. He thinks the idea of averaging % complete is beyond laughable. The survey information is worthless. You cannot draw any conclusions from it, what so ever. They could be worse of or better off. Some have gone to database sheet and their analysis shows that, collectively, they are worse off, especially the Mid American Interconnect.

He knows from experience as a project management consultant for 20+ years that most companies do not know manage projects very well and this one has a project completion date that cannot slip, not to mention that most got started late. And how they all expect to be "Y2K Ready" on the same date while they all started at different times, with different project scopes and schedules is more than unrealistic. Do all the utilities have the exact same level of competence and expertise in managing complex projects like this?

So, from now on, save your valuable time and energy going over the NERC reports for preperations. The NERC doesn't know any better where the industry stands as whole than we do, nothing more than an educated guess. The report, however, is fun to read as an exercise in self denial.

We will find out how they all did collectively on Jan. 1, 2000. As a Nation, we will all be crossing our fingers.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

NERC shows a february1999.xls spreadsheet at their ftp://ftp.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/y2k/ directory dated March 10, 1999.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

Looking at the February NERC spreadsheet, when they say there are 245 respondants, is there a reason for that? Are they on some sort of rotating response cycle? How does that number compare to what I understand to be the 3,200 utilities? How many should be responding?

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

Alexander, the NERC surveys of bulk power producers are gathered monthly. I believe the reports to the DOE (Department of Energy) are done on a quarterly basis. The last one was in January (reporting on the previous three months) so the next one should be sometime in April. You should understand, however, that the responses received monthly vary a lot and are voluntary. NERC has no power to force a utility to respond to the surveys, and some of them send in a response one month and maybe not the next month (or two). Also, if you access the monthly data, you'll find that not all questions are answered on each individual survey and the response totals for specific question lines vary quite a bit.

Snyder, since someone else asked a similar question a few weeks ago, I've copied and pasted part of my reply for you:

If you have an Adobe Acrobat Reader, so you can access the most recent NERC report to the DOE, the very last part of that report adresses "Who's in Charge?" as to gathering data. It's in Appendix C. The report can be found at:

http://www.nerc.com/y2k

According to the Senate Y2K Committee report just released, there are "about 3,200 independent electric utilities" in the U.S. These include about 250 investor-owned or private utilities, 10 government utilities, 2,000 other publicly owned utilities, and 900 cooperatives. The report also says that almost 80% of the power generation comes from those 250 investor-owned or private utilities. This doesn't include the entities which don't actually generate power themselves, but do buy and distribute it, or coordinate the buying and selling of grid power (around 4,000 more).

The larger utilities are composed of many generating plants, including the nuclear plants. Some nuclear plants are owned by two or more utilities which have shares in them. The number of generating "plants" is entirely different from the utility count, and much higher, so you have to be careful to distinguish the two. For instance, one utility may have 60-70 generating "units" (plants) and reports about "plants" being ready do not necessarily mean the owning utility is Y2K ready; just a portion of it is.

This is what the NERC report said about which types of utility data are being covered by which organizations, with NERC as "coordinator". The American Public Power Assn. (APPA) is covering state and local municipal electricity providers. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is focusing on embedded systems, technical and project management Y2K issues. EPRI members number 100+ of the larger utiltiies. The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) is assisting in the review of distribution systems. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) is coordinating status assessments among its members. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is coordinating the readiness assessment of nuclear plants, and the Canadian Electric Association (CEA) is also involved because parts of Canada's generation is connected to the U.S. grid.

Are you bleary eyed yet from all the acronyms? :) The NERC monthly questionnaire is targeted "to the approximately 200 entities that own, operate, or monitor the bulk electric systems of North America." So the data we get from those represents a majority of the power generation in the country, but only a small percentage of the actual number of utilities.

There is also not a 100% response rate in any of the areas covered by all the above organizations. Some people assume those not responding are further behind in Y2K fixes (or haven't started a project). Others surmise that they just won't fill out the forms, either because of legal advice, or because they don't want to be bothered with time consuming paperwork.

To sum up, there are no hard and fast answers and as the recent Senate report mentioned, almost all the data we have is self-reported and limited by legal considerations. In my opinion, devising your own risk management plan is a common sense thing to do for anyone.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

Bonnie,

I believe there is a small mistake in the Senate Report. They break it down as:

- 250 investor-owned or private utilities - 10 government utilities - 2,000 other publically owned utilties - 900 coops

Then, in the text below the table, they talk about the "250 investor-owned public utilities" generating 80% of the power.

I think the 250 are public, and the 2000 are private, and the table is wrong in that regard.

Jon

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

I have received the answers, and would like to point out the NERC site includes their strategies for conducting the April 9 Drill,at ftp://ftp.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/y2k/drill-preparation- strategies.pdf and it appears they are more interested in a public relations campaign promulgating falsehoods that testing anything. The idea that they publish instructions on how to make the drill come out with a positive result is so blatently conspiratorial that I can't fathom the senate committee doesn't remove them from their position. Am I wrong, or is the potential for a utility industry failure not the most serious threat to our civilization as we know it, absent a full scale thermonuclear war?

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

I forgot to say thanks for the great info and responses. Alex

-- Anonymous, March 18, 1999

Jon, I agree the Senate report was inexplicit in their language in many respects. For instance, the 250 "investor owned or private" utilities mentioned is misleading in one way, but the attempt to portray that category of utilities was accurate. There are approximately 250 investor owned utilities, but investor owned utilities are subdivided into two categories. There are utilities which are owned by stockholders and whose stock is publicly traded on Wall Street. However, there are also investor owned utilities which are "private" in that the investors are a consortium of private investors and the stock is not publicly traded. These privately held investor owned utilities are not subject to the same SEC reporting requirements as are the publicly traded ones. I think it's this combination of types of investor owned utilities that the Senate was addressing.

There are also 2,000 publicly owned utilities, but here we get into trouble because of various interpretations of the word "public". When we say, "publicly traded" in speaking of investor owned utilities, this means available to the public. (Another kicker is that these are also sometimes termed "private" utilities, because they are owned by private citizen stockholders!) The "publicly owned" in reference to those 2,000 entities, however, is better expressed as "municipal" utilities. These are state, county and city generating utilities -- public in the sense of being taxpayer supported, but not in the sense of being available to private investors (unless we're talking about bond holders and that's a whole other can of worms). I have seen these 2,000 termed "private" on occasion, I guess as a differentiation between publicly traded utilties, but it's a misnomer.

All of this goes to show that confusion can abound in even simple reports. That's one of the reasons why we have lawyers in this country! *grin* The language the average person uses can be very imprecise. Take away the need for legally precise wording and half the lawyers would likely be out of a job.

Since I've probably confused anyone reading this even more than they were before I started, there is an excellent primer for anyone interested in understanding an overview of the electric industry. Go to:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/prim2/toc/hitml

The Introduction link on that page discusses the number of various types of utilities in this country, and there is a lot of other valuable information for people trying to get an overall view of the industry. Scroll down to Figure 3 on the Introduction page and there are definitions of the various types of utilities, and the explanations are better than my attempts here.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 1999

Alexander, I just posted some links to older threads on this forum which are discussions of the drill strategies document you referenced. Check out my answer to the recent question, "NERC instructions to utilities on getting good test results" to access many more comments on this issue. (Be sure to read them all to get a balanced viewpoint.)

Certainly your take that an electrical industry failure in any country would have severe consequences is well founded, but this depends more on the length of any potential failures than the number of them. Unfortunately, when the interconnections of various infrastructure industrys are contemplated, it becomes difficult to pin down what the "most serious threat" to our civilization is, and obviously there are global implications which may well affect the U.S. adversely, also. I don't think anybody is going to be able to pin down what will happen before we find out for ourselves in 2000.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 1999

although i am quite interested in this answer i also wonder in conjuction with this report when the ncr..nuclear reglatory committee will let us know what they plan to do with the nuk reactors on july 1...that was their official deadline ...with contingency plans to stay open....please respond to the site or info........thanks

-- Anonymous, March 23, 1999

Bravo/gratitude Bonnie, you are one FINE teacher. Amazing skill at rendering piles of docu-talk & formal details into the most salient points.

Endless thanks for eloquently clarifying so many COMPLEX issues - over and over and over, I've read on this board. (Your description of the 'public' vs 'private' utilities issue above - is one small, but very articulate - example.)

Are you getting paid enough? {no way...}

-- Anonymous, March 24, 1999

Vicki, there is some information about the timing and decision making process of the NRC regarding potential non-Y2K-ready nuclear plants at:

http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/TRANSCRIPTS/19990211b.html

This is a transcript of a Feb, 1999 Y2K briefing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The July 1 deadline you mentioned is not the deadline for NRC decisions on possibly shutting down any plants, but it's the target date nuclear facilities must either report they have mission critical systems ready, or state what is not done with details of when it is estimated that unfinished critical work will be completed. (For instance some "exceptions" noted already in NRC audits are systems which can only be replaced/remediated during scheduled plant outages, some of which won't occur until the end of the year, past the deadline.)

Here are some extracted statements from the hearing:

"The information on the status of these systems, Chairman Jackson, will be provided by all licensees by July 1."

"We have a plan that allows us sufficient time to address these issues and make the necessary decisions in order to assure safety at these plants."

" Our overall plan is to have information relative to their readiness in July and our audits completed, to have that information to decide where do we go from here based on the information or our understanding of the state of readiness."

" The point in time in August is to assess what regulatory actions might be necessary to follow up based on our understanding for the state of readiness. Those could be focused reviews, additional site visits, requests for additional information, management meetings, telephone conferences, and plant-specific orders to assess the information and require appropriate response. In September of 1999, we would make a decision on any need to issue a plant-specific order for Y2K problems. We hope to be ahead of the power curve, so to speak. As we have discussed already, in October of 1999 we would have the exercise of the agency's contingency plan. ... In December we will stand ready to implement the plan, and within the context of the contingency plan, the response center will be manned 12 hours before, and we will have sustained manning until 12 hours after the transition date."

"CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you two questions. Should plant-specific Y2K actions be required, will they be coordinated in such a way as to allow time to arrange for replacement power? MR. MIRAGLIA: Our plan in terms of having it done in September would give us that time. Those orders could be as severe as shutdown or they may address specific issues as well. The idea would be if we have concerns to have those identified by September such that we can plan accordingly." ***

Diane, paid? Paid? What's that? Actually, I have been offered paid writing jobs but of choice turned them down, the reason being that certain extended family obligations (health and other issues) depend on my being available and I don't feel I can commit to anything which I might have to drop at a moment's notice for things I consider more important. It wouldn't be fair to anyone who was paying me for work to possibly have to throw them over in the middle of a job. If I can't post here for a few days at a time (or even longer) then I'm not missing any deadlines and no one is hurt. In my situation, flexibility is the prime consideration. Thank you for your kind post, I'm glad if you've been helped by by comments. It's funny though, because I figure I've learned way more from other people's input than anything I give out. It's together we have the best chance of putting all the Y2K puzzle pieces together. If many hands make light work, then many minds make for wonderful insights!

-- Anonymous, March 24, 1999