check out these excerpts:

**Despite the booming business in batteries and electric generators, the U.S. electric utility industry has achieved an impressive level of Year 2000 compliance.

**While some are still preparing for a blackout, there is growing evidence that the lights will stay on when the millennium comes around...

**This enviable degree of compliance would not have been possible without the efforts of smaller industry associations across the country, which have taken steps to educate and mobilize their members about the Millennium Bug. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is a good example. This agency oversees roughly half of Indiana's utility companies, including 53 investor-owned electric utilities that supply the bulk of Indiana's electrical power. In November 1998, the commission sent out over a thousand surveys to utilities across the state, asking them to report on the status of their Year 2000 plans...

**To date, 18 out of the 30 electric utilities regulated by the IURC have responded to the survey. The low response may have to do with education, said Soultz. "Smaller utilities may not realize that even though they don't use PCs extensively, they still face Y2K risks from embedded chips."

okay- so, we have an "enviable" degree of compliance - and yet, 12 of 30 - ie, 40%- of utilities did not even *respond* to a survey? so they don't *know* where these companies stand? and yet, this is a supposed to be a *positive* example of compliance? what do the negative ones look like?

the url for this story is...

http://year2000.dci.com/Articles/990324utilities.htm

-- Anonymous, March 25, 1999