I've been tracking the announcements of electric utilities being Y2k ready.

Jonny Canuck got me interested in the percentage of power generation declared. From this site , I found the electricity generated, by utility, for February, 1999. It lists 300 generating utilities, which produced 232,618,438 Thousand KWH in February. I make the assumption that, while not an annual total, that this data is fairly representative.

Ranking the generation by utility, the top 100 produced 205,166,527 Thousand KWH, or 88% of total generation. I've attempted to research the top 100. Of those, I've found 61 claiming Y2k readiness, which account for 146,183,492 thousand KWH, or 71% of the generation.

While not completely researched, in total I've found 79 of the 300 claiming Y2k readiness, accounting for 152,235,902 thousand KWH, or 65% of total generation. Note this is not complete, as I did not research each of the lower 200, but merely used the PR release readily available.

I plan on posting the complete spreadsheet as a table, but will have to wait a day or two to load the HTML addin for Excel, to build the table.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 08, 1999

Answers

I'm looking forward to seeing it. If the grid stays up, or is restored in just a day or two, we should be able muddle through this mess somehow. If it's down for an extended period of time, things would start unraveling at pretty fast pace.

-- Dog Gone (layinglow@rollover.now), July 08, 1999.

I'm sorry, Hoff, but "ready" just doesn't do it for most of us. I visited recently with the division manager of our electric utility. Readiness, he said, means having contingency plans. It means a stockpile of coal. It means all hands on deck at the rollover. It means the short-term ability to bill manually. The utility is ready; it isn't compliant.

You can post all the Norm-like, happy-face announcements you want about "readiness." I'll stop reading your "readiness" posts now. I'll revisit you when you put up a spreadsheet detailing comliance of electric utilities.

-- Vic (Rdrunner@internetwork.net), July 08, 1999.

Make that compliance.

-- Vic (Rdrunner@internetwork.net), July 08, 1999.

Well, Vic, I really don't care whether you read my posts or not.

I've posted the definition used for Y2k Ready before. My concern is whether or not the utilities can generate and transmit electricity, which is the essence of the definition.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 08, 1999.

Who are you trying to kid, Hoffmeister? Of course you care whether I read your posts. That's one of the reasons you post. I suspect that one of your darkest days was when the "thread resident" time decreased, forcing you to have to work harder to go read your witty posts and recondite responses.

Your protestations to the contrary, ready in the context of Y2K does not mean compliant ... and you know it.

-- Vic (Rdrunner@internetwork.net), July 08, 1999.

from http://www.y2knewswire.com/19990708jog.htm:

Last week, Y2KNEWSWIRE conducted an interview with a NERC spokesperson. Below is a small part of the conversation that took place. This will probably be the shortest story we'll ever post, and it needs no explanation:

NERC spokesperson: So we came up with the concept of "Y2K ready with limited exceptions." [These are] specific, defined items that say we are waiting for the software or the hardware from the vendor... So we said, okay, you [the power utilities] can report you're Y2K Ready with Limited Exceptions if you tell us what these items are.

Y2KNEWSWIRE: But what happens then if those parts don't come in, is the plant then downgraded from Y2K Ready with Exceptions to something beneath that? How is that handled?

NERC spokesperson: Well, if it doesn't come in, the facility just isn't ready...

Y2KNEWSWIRE: Does the NERC have a deadline for those exceptions to be fulfilled or else the plant has to say, okay, we're not ready, is there some requirement along those lines?

NERC spokesperson: We don't anticipate that happening. We really don't anticipate that happening.

-- a (a@a.a), July 08, 1999.

Late last week, Y2KNEWSWIRE broke the story of the "power industry template documents," exposing the word-for-word copycat statements contained in numerous power industry press releases. This duplication of common phrases points to a common source. Over the holiday weekend, Y2KNEWSWIRE obtained documents and interviews that now prove the origin of these template documents: NERC. (North American Electric Reliability Council). NERC is the industry organization charged with whipping power companies into full Y2K compliance. Y2KNEWSWIRE interviewed a NERC spokesperson as well as an industry spokesperson representing a very large power utility company in the South. Both confirmed NERC as the source of these documents. One even admitted to Y2KNEWSWIRE that electric utilities are collaborating on what language to use, saying, "We are working with a few of the other major utilities real closely so we're all talking the same language basically." Y2KNEWSWIRE has documented several examples of this "sharing" of common language. Click the picture below for the (readable) full-sized version: Stunning details from these interviews -- as well as the source location for the NERC documents -- are revealed in a (paid) subscribers-only feature story here on Y2KNEWSWIRE.COM. THE NERC RUNAROUND Perhaps most astonishing: NERC provides these template letters to power companies... then accepts the same letters back as evidence of compliance! Believe it or not, on page two of this document from NERC to power companies, in paragraph two, the reader finds this: "NERC is providing a template for a letter that each organization may use to inform NERC that its mission-critical electrical systems have met the NERC criteria for being Y2K Ready. ...NERC will use the monthly report data and the letter to determine whether an organization has met the NERC criteria." Given this information, the power industry "compliance" process suddenly becomes clear: (see picture below) NERC provides the template documents to a power company. The power company inserts their company name and attributes the good-sounding quotes to their company president, CIO or spokesperson. The power company "officially" submits this letter back to NERC. NERC sees the letter and -- surprise! -- everything sounds great. The power company is given the thumbs up. In other words, what NERC is doing is like handing out the answers to the test, asking students to put their name on the top, then giving everybody an 'A'. What NERC didn't count on was the disappointing laziness of power companies who took the NERC quotes and copied them word-for-word in their own press releases. This is what signaled "fraud" when Y2KNEWSWIRE began to look into the story. Just as a high school teacher gets suspicious when two students (who sit next to each other) turn in identical answers on a test, we the public must now raise our eyebrows and ask, "Who's cheating?" The answer, of course, is simple: NERC and the power companies are cheating. They're colluding to create a mass illusion of "readiness," oblivious to the hard-core requirements of real Y2K compliance. Meanwhile, the true Y2K compliance status of the country's electrical utilities remains in question. Some power companies are even fighting to suppress the release of Y2K-related documents. They don't want the public to know the real story. They say, "Trust us." But in fact, can you really trust an industry that hands out all the answers, then uses those very same answers as the basis for determining Y2K compliance? This, combined with the now-famous "exceptions list" that allows electric utilities to be called "Y2K Ready with exceptions" even though they aren't ready for Y2K, presents a clear pattern: NERC is after a PR victory, not Y2K compliance. Readers are reminded of NERC's own words, distributed to power companies before the 4/9/1999 "drill" that said, "Do not make the drill too complex. We want to have a successful and meaningful story for publication..." We have more details in the members-only feature story, to be posted mid-day Tuesday...

-- a (a@a.a), July 08, 1999.

Thanks y'all.

-- Mommacares (harringtondesignX@earthlink.net), July 08, 1999.

Standard disclaimer -- none of this proves they aren't ready, blah, blah, blah. True. But what a freaking charade. Bozo-ville.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), July 08, 1999.

LoserWire is such a joke anymore.

Here's a hint, folks: NERC provided the letter because that was the goal, and they wanted the utilities to be able to put their names to it.

Without it, we'd have 300 different versions of wording on Y2k status, and y'all would be bitchin because no 2 were the same.

A utility signing the letter is saying that is their status.

BTW, I'll post the table tomorrow morning sometime. I know, Vic, you can hardly wait.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 08, 1999.

Mutha: I guess Ed Yardeni is a huckster also because he charges a fee for his research? Come to think of it, I charge a fee for my research also! How about you Mutha? Do you work for free? FYI, North, Yourdon, Hamasaki, Yardeni, and Adama haven't taken a PENNY from me and I have received infinitely more in return. Get it yet?

Hoff: What about Tava/Beck's claims? What about the careful scripting of the April "drill"? What about the former NERC director's statement, and the one from the former NRC inspector? What about Rep. Grindley's 3 week figure? I could go on, but you get the point.

I'm not saying that the grid is necessarily screwed, only that there is a good deal of spin here, and most of it seems to be on the polly side.

-- a (a@a.a), July 09, 1999.

"Spin" is such a fun, happy, lighthearted term used to describe: lies, cover-up, untruths, distortion of the facts, distraction, finger pointing, fluffing, down-playing, calming, wooing, soothing, stroking, insulting..........

Shucks, there's so very much of it being spoon fed to Americans, it's enough to make the average Joe want to cower in churches waiting for the world to end, determined to buy desert land and hoard gold, bullets and Skoal in their pickup trucks....wouldn't you agree MISTER PRESIDENT?

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), July 09, 1999.