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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems and Utilities -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (39)	7/27/1998 12:05:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 89

'A Reader Wonders about Independent Y2K Auditors for Public Utilities Jeff Roberts writes: I am working with Michigan Senator Mat Dunaskiss, Chairman of the Michigan Senate Committee on Technology and Energy on finding ways to oversee the utilities in regards to their progress toward Y2K compliance. Currently the Michigan Public Service Commission is only able to send surveys into the utilities to check their compliance. There is no one at the MI P.S.C. qualified to go into the utilities to check their compliance!! AND, our Governor has cut the P.S.C. staffing from 260 to 160!! My question for you is this: Is there an example of a utility anywhere that has used INDEPENDENT Y2K AUDITORS FOR UTILITIES and if so, could you please send me more information on the experiences, including contact info. Your assistance on this would be greatly appreciated and certainly a central portion of my future Web site. Thank you in advance!! Sincerely, Jeff Roberts Dick Mills responds: Unfortunately, the simple answer to your question is no. Few of the state PUCs are equipped to do anything more than review rate change requests. The impossibility of them really overlooking these huge monopolies was one of the arguments for deregulation ... no monopoly no PUC needed. There is no Federal or industry oversight agency either to do the audit. On the other hand, no industry of any kind has ever faced the Y2K challenge. The utilities, like everyone else are inventing as they go along. There are no standards for compliance, nor any auditors who know what to audit. There is simply no history of any organization in any country that has been through the experience to the end, successfully or not. So in fairness, even if the PUC was more able, nobody could do any actual audits. The closest is the banking and security industries. They are being forced to demonstrate that their stuff works by early 1999 or shut down. That qualifies as an audit. Kind of hard to apply to other industries like airlines and power where it's not possible to put up a duplicate of the entire system for testing purposes. So what can you do? I too am chairman of a local group: The Albany NY Capital District Year 2000 interest group. We've decided to focus on helping our communities and local organizations prepare for the contingencies of infrastructure failures. Small-scale preparation is much more effective dollar-for-dollar than working on fixing the Y2K bugs. We take the attitude that we really should be ready for events like ice storms anyhow, so why not prepare now. We considered and rejected making a campaign to force the PUC to force the utilities to be more candid. We realized that the truth is that they don't know the actual status to tell, and too much activism would just make them defensive. Not far from here in Northern NY last winter, customers were without power for up to 10 weeks because of the ice storm. Worse than anything I expect due to Y2K. Good Luck Dick Mills y2ktimebomb.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (39)	7/27/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89

'Subject: Response to disconnecting the grid 'From: Robert Schneider <schneiderr@asme.org> Date: 1998-07-25 12:32:02 This is a comment on Kelly Horn's post to the thread. As someone who has been an electric utility system planner, the people who look at transmission and substation expansion-which is usually driven by reliability criteria, and as someone who helped convert a utility from a non-generating utilty to one that had its own generation including exploring whether to establish its own load control area or remain part of another utility's load control area; I would like to say that I don't think the y2k problem is going to result in a complete blackout on new years day. If little is done, I think some parts of the US (and other countries) may have localized outages, but nothing to equal the famous east coast blackout. <p> Because of this belief (that is based on 25+ years experience as a power plant/transmission planning & design engineer for utilities) I think that your comments implying that all utilities "connected to the grid" will be dragged down to darkness is not correct. <p> I have been working and talking to a number of utilities that are addressing embedded chip y2k issues and have modified their energy management, control and dispatching computer systems (EMS & SCADA). I feel that there could be some problems with y2k outages, but that they will be isloated and geographically dispursed and not nearly as widespread as some have indicated. Most utilities I know of (or their consulting engineers) are taking steps on y2k issues. I think electric utilities have lagged behind certain industries (oil refineries especially; but are ahead of other industries). Most of the electric utilities I know prioritized billing and finacial computer systems first, then EMS/SCADA, then PC's, then embedded chip (wires & facilities). I personally don't agree with the priority, but they seem to be making progress. <p> I am working with one utility right now on embedded chip y2k compliance in its substation and transmission line and have found some y2k non-compliant equipment, but nothing that would disrupt the flow of electricity. The result for this client is going to be some equipment upgrades next year for just two of a few y2k non-compliant pieces of equipment. The other non-y2k compliant equipment is non-compliant in "optional features" that are not used at this facility. We are likely going to put some warning lables on them so that nobody will try to use those features in the future. The features that are being used work. <p> I think that y2k is a serious issue as power outages cause (even isolated ones in just a few areas) real problems. I think that gently pushing utilities to address their y2k embedded chip compliance is a important task, but I don't see either utilities refusing to act or widespread blackouts happening. <p> Bob Schneider From the www.euy2k.com discussion board