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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2544)	9/5/1998 2:21:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

'The Y2K Solution: Run for Your Life!! wired.com

To: John Mansfield who wrote (2544)	9/6/1998 6:00:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

'An electric utility industry group (EPRI), held their third Y2K workshop ______ From: Fred Swirbul <fswirbul@home.com> 1:58 Subject: Electric Utilities (EPRI Workshop) An electric utility industry group (EPRI), held their third Y2K workshop during the last week of August. Below are some of the highlights. Total attendance was estimated at 500-600 people, representing approximately 100 organizations, most of them US Electric Utilities. This represents about 80% of all US nuclear plants and about 50% of all US electrical generation (based on 1996 generation totals). Other attendees included non-US electric utilities, and oil and refinery companies. The workshop was concentrated on Y2K testing and testing results. No workshop poll was taken of overall Y2K status since two groups have (officially?) taken over that roll for the US. The DOE has asked NERC (North American Electricity Reliabiity Council) to provide Y2K status for all areas of electric utilities. The first submital to NERC was due 8/28/98. It is a text and spreadsheet submittal, with one page per area, such as Nuclear, Fossil, Telecom, IT, Business Systems, etc. While the report asks a number of questions in each area, the meat of the report will be the statistics in the three NERC defined phases of a Y2K program, Inventory, Assessment and Remediation. Due to the electronic format, results should be compiled rather quickly, and then, as I understand, reported directly to congress. The NEI (Nuclear Electric Industry) is also gathering Y2K status for nuclear plants. Preliminary numbers indicate that 80% of all nuclear plants will be done with detailed assessments by 12/98. It is uncomfortable to hear that a few have effectively not started their detailed assessments (no, names were not released). No Y2K problems in nuclear plant safe shutdown systems have been reported from any nuclear plant. This would sure seem to put a little water on the rumor that the NRC is going to mandate the shutdown of all US Nuclear Plants. Two separate speakers described how they have not only completed testing and remediation, but how they are currently operating multiple fossil units with (almost) all clocks set exactly two years into the future. The clocks will be set back to correspond to current time sometime in March 2000. That sure gets rid of a lot of Y2K uncertainty for those units. The best news was the over all impression that most generation plants have only a small handful of serious Y2K problems that must be fixed. Most Y2K problems, if they exist at all, are merely "quirks". As has been stated previously, less complex embedded systems in the I&C hierarchy of complexity just don't freeze up. The next full EPRI workshop will be help in January 1999. It was indicated that the primary topic will be on Y2K contingency planning. It still seems to me that at a minimum, most of the lights are going to be on when the next millenium arrives. Fred Swirbul (not speaking for my employer)