News Digest

Fortnightly Magazine - March 1 1999
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

Studies & Reports

Year 2000 Readiness. On Jan. 11 the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) predicted a minimal effect on electric system operations from Y2K software problems. The Department of Energy, which had asked NERC to run the electric industry assessment, added that 98 percent of U.S. and Canadian electric systems are participating in the NERC effort, and that more than 50 percent of "mission-critical" components had been tested by the end of December, the issue date for NERC's fourth-quarter report, "Preparing the Electric Power Systems of North America for Transition to the Year 2000."

Nevertheless, NERC will continue "to chase after" the 2 percent that aren't participating, according to Jerry Cauley, NERC's Y2K program coordinator. Cauley noted that NERC has compiled a list of every electric system provider (there are more than 3,000) and has listed those actively complying at the NERC website (www.nerc.com). NERC will list nonparticipating companies "at a later date."

As part of remediation efforts, bulk electric operating organizations are drafting contingency plans, to be ready by the end of June. Two coordinated testing drills were planned for April 9 and Sept. 8-9. The latter date "9/9/99", has been known to crash some computers. For this reason, the date will serve as a dress rehearsal for the Y2K calendar rollover.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.