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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex who wrote (23133)	11/19/1998 9:54:00 AM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116880

I think you have a point concerning the electric side of the business, but I can assure you that the investor owned, larger electrics have prioritized the Y2K issues they are addressing. The first priority will be the continued delivery of power. For the investor owned utilities, think of it this way. Rate of return regulation provides essentially a cost-plus structure -- that is any plant improvement or modification that can even reasonably be shown to be necessary (Y2K costs included) goes into rate base -- the sum of dollars upon which the utility's return is calculated. More investment more earnings, on an absolute basis. Utilities have every positive incentive there is to over not under spend searching out an eliminating any Y2K problems. If someone goes down, it will be stupidity or lack of judgement, not a lack of funds that is the cause. If I were served by a municipality or a smaller investor owned utility -- I might worry a little, but not one of the larger investor owned utilities. How susceptible is the grid to a cascading sort of problem? I don't think it is near as susceptible as it was 3 - 4 years ago, due to some events that served as a wake up call to the entire industry. That said, I wouldn't discourage anyone who lived out in the boondocks to have a generator if it makes them feel comfortable. Just a significant outage which could happen any time might make such a purchase worthwile. I guess what I'm saying is concern -- yes. Panic or a lot of anxiety about the matter for most folks is just not warranted. Everybody doesn't need to have a generator standing by.