WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The lights will remain on. A report to be given to the Department of Energy this morning will proclaim the nation's electric system to be Y2K proof. A special senate hearing on power companies has been canceled, however leaving important questions unanswered.
An advance copy of the report was made available to WorldNetDaily on Monday night. That report uses contrived definitions to be able to proclaim that power plants are Y2K ready. The report does admit that 64 power companies are not ready today, and gives different dates of final preparedness between now and the end of October.
"Mission-critical component testing indicates that the transition through critical Y2K dates is expected to have minimal impact on electric system operations in North America. It is estimated that fewer than 3% of items that were tested during the Assessment phase had any difficulty with date manipulations," states the NERC report.
NERC states that there are 3,088 electric supply and delivery organizations in North America which have participated in their Y2K readiness process to date in section 2.1 of the report. In section 2.4 they claim that only 251 organizations are recognized by NERC as Y2K ready, which they list in Appendix B. Despite this vast difference in numbers they claim over 99 percent of power systems are currently ready to meet the challenges of the Y2K bug, and they are confident the lights will remain on.
The report is scheduled to be presented to Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson at a media event in the Holeman Room of the National Press Club at 9:30 a.m. today. John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion was scheduled to attend while Michehl R. Gent, president of NERC and Gerry Cauley, NERC's Y2K project manager jointly make the presentation, according to Gene Gorzelnik, NERC director of communications.
Meanwhile, the Senate Y2K Special Committee issued a press release on Monday to cancel plans for a hearing on the readiness of the nation's electric and gas utilities which had been scheduled for Wednesday.
No explanation for the cancellation of the meeting was given and calls to Don Meyer, spokesman for the committee were not returned by press time. The notice did indicate that the prepared statements from those who were called to testify will be posted on the committee website on Wednesday.
Meyer had asked WorldNetDaily for copies of information regarding a story of cover up within NERC. Gorzelnik admitted to WorldNetDaily in a taped interview that NERC told power companies to hide information from the Department of Energy regarding Y2K problems.
Meyer said NERC officials would be called on the carpet in a senate hearing to explain the cover up. Although the written report from Gent to the committee will be available, it will not be possible to ask Gent to explain the intentional cover up because of the cancellation.
Although NERC declares power generators to be ready, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a report showing that 35 of the country's nuclear plants are not ready on time and will hopefully complete their preparations by November 30. A citizen's watchdog group has called for the shut down of all nuclear plants on December 1 to avoid a catastrophic event.
The NERC report to be released today provides a list of power companies that are not ready along with projected dates of completion of their readiness status. Each plant has been permitted to down grade preparations from Y2K compliance to Y2K readiness. The difference is significant.
Power plants have also been permitted to call themselves Y2K ready if they complete preparations only for systems considered mission critical. Definitions for that term have enabled many previously labeled mission critical systems to be taken off that list.
The result, according to critics, will be power plants that are not capable of operating in the new year. NERC disagrees and defends their approach as being effective and successful. The report does admit some problems, however.
"There remains a minority of electric systems that have not met the industry target of being Y2K Ready by June 30, 1999. Of the 268 entities reporting monthly to NERC, 17 (6.3%) indicated they are not yet fully Y2K Ready or Y2K Ready With Limited Exceptions. Of these late entities, the average percent completion of Remediation and Testing is 88%. Of these 17 entities, eight expect to be Y2K Ready by the end of July, three by the end of August, five by the end of September, and the last one in October," the report states.
A previous NERC report explained the dependence placed on proper operation of power plants in order to keep the nation's power grid operating.
"More than any other element of the North American economic and social infrastructure, the electricity production and delivery systems must be dependable during the transition to Y2K. Every other critical element of infrastructure depends on the availability of an interconnected, reliable supply of electrical power. There is no doubt that cascading or even localized outages of generators and transmission facilities could have serious short- and long-term consequences," the report states.
Electric power in the U.S. is distributed through a power grid, which is made up of four large interconnections, according to NERC. Disruptions within the grid could cause a failure of the entire grid, or perhaps a failure of one of the interconnections.
"A major disturbance within one part of an interconnection will rapidly have an impact throughout the interconnection and has the potential to cascade the effect to the entire interconnection," the NERC report explains.
Although the loss of one, two, or even three power plants within an interconnection will not necessarily cause cascading outages, the Y2K problem may bring about such a failure. Many power plants have digitally controlled parts from the same manufacturer. These common modes could spell disaster.
"Y2K poses the threat that common mode failures (such as all generator protection relays of a particular model failing simultaneously) or the coincident loss of multiple failures may result in stressing the electric system to the point of a cascading outage over a large area," NERC admits in the report.
NERC has promised a follow-up progress report to the Department of Energy even though this report was to have been their last.