The FRCC sponsored a Y2K workshop last week for industry reps who are actually doing the work. Are any other NERC regions doing similar sessions?

Jim

-- Anonymous, October 09, 1998

Answers

PJM is sponsoring a Y2k workshop on October 26. MAAC and PJM are very closely aligned - to the point that MAAC's website is on PJM's webserver. This may be as close as you get to a MAAC workshop.

Details and registration: www.pjm.com

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1998

This is not an answer to the question, merely a comment on the state of things in Durban, South Africa, where I live and where 2 oil refineries are based. We had a utilities workshop last week, where our local electricity provider (amongst others) presented the state of their project to us.

It's allright, everybody, the billing systems have been checked and will be working...

The Electricity Department started its Y2k project in June 1997 and is currently 40% of the way through their project. (Anybody want to do any sums here ?) To date, they have taken an inventory of their embedded systems but do not know whether any of these are compliant or not. Being a council, they cannot easily adjust salaries of employees and are suffering major resource losses, thus being forced to bring in contractors and consultants.

When I asked the Director if he had included extended lead times in his estimates for replacing non-compliant systems, as they seemed to be so far behind most industries, he admitted he had not. He is working on a non-compliance rate of 6%, but could not tell us exactly how many items, which involved embedded systems, were in the inventory.

What is positive in South Africa, however, is that major businesses are now being asked to contribute a small amount from their Y2k budgets to help local authorities get on to the track, because the lack of Y2k preparedness amongst local authorities (many of whom sell water and electricity to their residents) is the area of major concern at the moment.

-- Anonymous, November 05, 1998