The most recent NERC report to the DOE has a *lot* of information in it. To help prevent my getting lost in, or overloaded by the variety of details, I decided to focus my attention on one section of the data at a time. A divide and conquer strategy? Maybe it will keep my brain from exploding! *smile*

The American Public Power Association (APPA) has a membership which includes many state, county, and municipal electricity service providers. APPA is coordinating with NERC by sharing surveys of its members as well as non-member public power providers. At the link:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/prim2/chapter1.html

there is this explanation about the category of Publicly Owned Electric Utilities: "Most municipal electric utilities simply distribute power, although some large ones produce and transmit electricity as well. There are approximately 2,000 publicly owned electric utilities in the United States. They represent about 62 percent of the number of electric utilities, supply approximately 10 percent of generation and generating capability.."

Therefore, the data provided by APPA deals with about 10% of generation, which doesn't put it in a class with the bulk utility generating data NERC itself collects info on. However, it helps to keep in mind that as of 1996, this 10% generation served *16 million* "ultimate customers" according to the chart included at the link I gave above.

To begin, the APPA survey data summary used in the NERC report can be accessed at:

ftp://ftp.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/y2k/appa-summary-data-april.pdf

The first thing to notice is that the only new data acquired by APPA for the first quarter 1999 is from a re-survey: "In March 1999, APPA re-surveyed the middle (538) and largest (240) public power systems." Responses and data about small public power systems (about 1300) are from the 1998 survey already reported on in the Jan. NERC report to the DOE. Since information from the 1998 survey is interspersed with the new March data, a reader should pay careful attention to what is a rehash of the old, and what is new. As far as I can determine, there is no new first quarter 1999 information about the small public power systems.

The responsibility for Y2K projects for small and medium sized public power providers ranges from the utility itself to city government, to city clerks and contracting companies. For the large systems the utility itself is responsible.

Under "Information and Planning -- All", it states that 84.2% of all utilities say they have enough information on the Y2K problem. [Does this mean that 15.8% say they don't have enough information about the problem?]

APPA received 715 responses from the total of 778 March surveys sent to medium and large public power providers. Sixty-three (63) of the medium to large utilities did not respond to the March survey.

Under "Testing and Results" we read, "Speaking only of mission critical systems, 73.08% of the middle and 82.70% of the large groups have completed some testing." [SOME testing?? The reader is left not knowing what "some testing" means. 1%? 50%? What? Neither do we know whether "testing" means assessment testing or integration testing after remediation, or both.]

The percentage chart for those respondents who did complete "some testing" and which gives some results of that testing (however much it was) shows four categories: Zero impact on electric delivery systems, Minor Impact, Major Impact and 100% Failure of electric delivery systems. The data looks good for the middle sized respondents who did "some testing" but the only thing listed under the Large size group is a 0.57% after both the Major Impact and 100% Failure categorys. [Wasn't there anything else to be reported about testing done by the Large size group of public providers? I guess not. And while that percent of serious failure in the Large group is very very small, it does indicate that somebody had a complete failure of electric delivery systems in their testing results.]

When you get to the estimated month of completion for remediation and testing, and the estimated month of readiness charts, you find that there were 698 respondents for both. This indicates that of the total March survey reponses mentioned earlier in the report, 17 of those utilities did not give answers to estimated completion of rem/testing or readiness. So of the total surveys sent out (778) there are 80 utilities which did not give any response about their completion status. This is a little over 10% which are keeping mum about when they'll be done.

Of the 698 public power providers which did give estimations on their month of rem/testing completion, 521 said they have or would meet the NERC June deadline. That's 66.9% of the total number of medium and large providers or two-thirds. 177 (23%) said they estimated they would be done sometime after the NERC deadline and before Dec. 31, 1999 -- and 80 (10%) didn't say one way or the other. In the Readiness estimates, the same 698 responders were divided into 403 (52% of total of all March surveys sent) who estimated readiness on or before the June target and 295 (38%) estimated they'd be done sometime before Dec.31. Again, ten percent didn't say.

Five more respondents (703) gave estimations of the percent of work completed. Since NERC is targeting a 70 to 75% completion rate as acceptable at the end of the first quarter 1999 in order to meet its June deadline, I counted 497 public providers who estimated they had completed 70% or more of their work. That's 64% of the total number of March surveys sent. 206 reported estimates under 70% done with 94 of those estimating 50% or less done. Seventy-five (75) gave no response.

Finally, even though the data for the "small" category of public providers is as of the end of 1998, as mentioned above, it should be noted that this report states 87% of the small had "initiated action to pursue solutions". That means 13% of them hadn't begun and we don't know how far past "initiating" the rest are. While the small public power systems will likely not have a serious impact on the overall grids, even if they fail, that won't be a comfort to those customers they serve if disruptions happen.

Since I very much doubt that anyone is going to pinpoint those small public providers which hadn't begun or others which may be at risk, individuals and businesses served by state, county or municipal power providers should be doing some serious risk assessment and making their own risk management preparations.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 1999