Studies & Reports
Year 2000 Readiness. On Jan. 11 the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) predicted a minimal effect on electric system operations from Y2K software problems. The Department of Energy, which had asked NERC to run the electric industry assessment, added that 98 percent of U.S. and Canadian electric systems are participating in the NERC effort, and that more than 50 percent of "mission-critical" components had been tested by the end of December, the issue date for NERC's fourth-quarter report, "Preparing the Electric Power Systems of North America for Transition to the Year 2000."
Nevertheless, NERC will continue "to chase after" the 2 percent that aren't participating, according to Jerry Cauley, NERC's Y2K program coordinator. Cauley noted that NERC has compiled a list of every electric system provider (there are more than 3,000) and has listed those actively complying at the NERC website (www.nerc.com). NERC will list nonparticipating companies "at a later date."
As part of remediation efforts, bulk electric operating organizations are drafting contingency plans, to be ready by the end of June. Two coordinated testing drills were planned for April 9 and Sept. 8-9. The latter date "9/9/99", has been known to crash some computers. For this reason, the date will serve as a dress rehearsal for the Y2K calendar rollover.