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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (26024)	1/12/1999 3:44:00 PM
From: Giraffe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116898

Y2K Not A National Threat To Power Grid - Report Jan 12 2:57am ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly all North American electric power supply systems will be ready for the new millennium and free from the threat of a feared Year 2000 computer meltdown that could cause rampant power blackouts, according to a report released Monday. The report, presented to U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson by the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, detailed the second of four quarterly updates by the council on how the continent's more than 3,000 power distributors are coping with the computer bug known as Y2K. ''Although there is clearly much more work to be done, we have found that North America's electric power supply and delivery systems are well on their way to being Y2K ready,'' said Michehl Gent, president of NERC. Y2K is shorthand for the year 2000 computer phenomena. Government and industry have allocated billions of dollars to make sure computer systems do not crash when systems misread the date 2000. Many systems are programmed to read the last two digits of a year, and could mistake ''2000'' for ''1900,'' possibly causing widespread malfunction. The government has set June 30 of this year as the target date for Y2K compliance. A few facilities were expected to miss the deadline because of scheduled maintenance, Gent said. NERC said more than half of all ''mission-critical'' power systems were now free from possible Y2K problems, up from 44 percent at the end of November. Live tests of remediated electric generators have resulted in no critical failures that would have caused a shutdown of power systems. At nuclear power plants, no Y2K problem has been discovered that would prevent any safety system from shutting down a plant in an emergency, the NERC report said. Gent said the rollover to the new millennium will create only a ''minimal'' impact on electric system operations. Impacts found so far suggest only ''nuisance'' errors, like incorrect dates in logs or displays on a monitor, and not snafus that would darken communities or entire grid systems. ''Computer errors found thus far do not appear likely to threaten electricity supplies to customers,'' Gent said. Richardson, who attended a press conference to tout the report's findings, applauded the power sector for achieving the best known Y2K compliance participation rate of any industry. ''I am pleased that 98 percent of the more than 3,000 entities that generate, transmit or distribute electric power within the U.S. are now taking part in the industry-wide assessment process,'' Richardson said. ''NERC's findings that there are no 'show stoppers' that would threaten the nation's electricity supplies is also welcome news, particularly in view of the fact that Y2K readiness efforts have advanced significantly since the September 1998 report,'' Richardson said. NERC will file two more quarterly reports this year, and conduct drills in April and September as rehearsals ahead of the Dec. 31, 1999, millennium rollover. Richardson said it was important for the industry to continue work on contingency plans despite the optimistic outlook for preventing Y2K computer glitches.