Rick,

In my rather controversial appearance on this forum many months ago, we had a rather interesting exchange. Unless you had your "Irish" up and emotion rather than intellect was doing your speaking - you have a promise to fulfill.

In the thread

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000REi

you said (clip follows) Second, when will your company be saying they are "Y2k Ready"? Or compliant? Or whatever the heck the buzzword is today - basically a reassurance to the customer that the chances of power failure on 01/01/2000 are no different than today. If you can answer this question, there's no need to read further. Actually, if every individual power company would answer this question, there would be no need for the euy2k.com website, and I could shut down the website and move on to greener pastures. There's a lot more $$ in SAP implementations than there is in Y2k. More of a future, too. (end clip)

Now, read a clip from the article posted in another thread by Art quoting the head of NERC. (begin clip)In a status report Friday, the council said it appears 2000 will have minimal impact on North American electric systems. Sufficient generating capacity should be available to meet the nation's needs, and transmission outages should be minimal.

At the end of March, three-fourths of all the testing and repairs that are needed had been completed, compared with 44 percent in November. "The bottom line," said council President Michael R. Gent, "is that for the typical person or business in North America, the supply of electricity will be like that on any other New Year's Day." (end clip)

This is what you requested. The EPRI conference attendees had no show stoppers that would contradict the NERC statement. The EPRI conference corroborates the NERC conclusions. These are not corporate spinmeisters at EPRI, they are the folks in the trenches doing the tests - your former comrades in arms.

Good luck with your SAP implementations, I sincerely hope you will prosper. Thanks for keeping this site up for as long as it was needed. It was indeed an interesting exercise observing engineers trying to explain an engineering solution to a public of "normal" folks. I guess Dogbert is right, engineers need to do some more socializing.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 1999

Answers

you said (clip follows) Second, when will your company be saying they are "Y2k Ready"? Or compliant? Or whatever the heck the buzzword is today - basically a reassurance to the customer that the chances of power failure on 01/01/2000 are no different than today. If you can answer this question, there's no need to read further. Actually, if every individual power company would answer this question, there would be no need for the euy2k.com website, and I could shut down the website and move on to greener pastures. There's a lot more $$ in SAP implementations than there is in Y2k. More of a future, too. (end clip)

No single power company (much less every individual power company), to the best of my knowledge, has publicly stated the above.

We have an industry association saying that as an aggregate, the industry is 75% toward completion of remediation and testing. That means some of the reporting bulk power entities, never mind individual power companies, are 40%. Some are 90%.

If yours is in the top quartile, congratulations to both you and your customers. But it doesn't come close to meeting my "site shutdown" requirements. ;-)

BTW, Mr. Gent and I exchanged emails a week or so back that pointed out some specific problem areas yet to be addressed, and he hasn't responded to me yet. I'll let you know if/when that response arrives.

Oh, also, what is an "atypical" person or business?

Better luck next quarter!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 1999

Does HES (Hawaii Electric Service) count as a power company?

-- Anonymous, May 06, 1999

Oops, that's heco (hawaii electric company)

They saytheir EMS, SCADA, and billing are tested and compliant, but it has been a long time since the web site has been updated. (pre Dec 98). But if you read the site, you see an *awful* lot of "our lawyers won't let us say any more than this"

Two additional suppliers that are publicly proclaiming readiness.

LES (Lincoln Electric Service) and NPPD (Nebraska Public Power District) are both saying that they have tested everything they can think of to test, and will only do new tests if something new surfaces. In particular, I have been in several public meetings where the Lincoln phone representative and the LES representative are. The phone rep says "If you have your phone service from us, you WILL have a dial tone, whether you have power or not." The LES man (a VP level guy) follows that and says "If we have telecommunications, you will have power." I realize they aren't bulk suppliers, but they are being very public in their comments.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 1999