I received a 20 page report from famed economist Dr. Ed Yardeni about the impact of Y2K on the power system. The Kennedy Y2K task force asked me to comment on the report. I have not yet been able to scan the whole thing in and do a good job. However, below are some excerpts from the Yardeni power report and my comments on them:

According to the report I have and the engineers I've talked to, there ARE manual alternatives. It just isn't efficient to use them during normal operations.

It is virtually impossible to test Y2K compatibility because the system must be kept on-line all the time.

The most complex systems, the power generating plants themselves, can be taken off-line and tested, and in fact this is being done now.

In other words, the precautions are likely to disrupt electric service no matter what happens in the year 2000.

This was in reference to the reduced transfers and increased capacity on the grid. What this means is that if a problem occurs, switching will not be immediate and the outage will not be transparent like it is today. The switching will be more controlled and make take minutes or hours instead of milliseconds.

Cannot be routed by switches.

I can't imagine what he meant by this. Just about all the power on the grid is routed by switches, mostly in the switchyards and the substations.

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 has planned for this and will disable this function on the grid. This is called "reduced transfers" and it stops the domino effect. I'm going to be putting a lot more technical detail about the power grid in future revisions of my paper.

Common mode failure

This is a real problem, but the NERC report found much more diversity in vendors than expected. The more diverse the equipment is, the less it is vulnerable to common mode failure. The tradeoff is that there is more Y2K work to do.

Borrowing surplus from other suppliers In year 2000 this may not be an option.

This premised is based on the idea that the grid is at capacity. In fact, the grid is capable of running North America during peak loads in the summer months with capacity to spare. Even though some plants have been shut down, others have been upgraded or new ones have been constructed. Fortunately, the millennium rollover occurs during the winter months, when the grid has the most spare capacity. In addition, maintenance is being scheduled so that even more spare capacity will be available during the Y2K transition period. Historically, the power grid has been at about 40-50% capacity on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Pace of remedial efforts too slow, milestones too distant

This was probably true earlier this year, but it seems that the utilities have finally "got it." Their pace has picked up and their milestones are being hit, and many of them have been hit in the second half of this year. The fourth quarter NERC report shows that milestones are expected to be hit sooner than the third quarter report shows. In other words, the schedule is being pulled in, not slipped.

Assurances of compliance little more than hope

In my opinion, the people that are fixing and testing the problem best know whether or not they can be compliant. Engineers understand the problem better than economists. More than 99% of generating capacity in North America now have a plan and are using it.

most difficult aspects in renovation and testing phases

This conflicts with what we have been told up to now, that the most difficult part of the problem is finding all the errors, and that the actual fix is simple. Given that, the hardest part is over. The second hardest part, testing, still lies ahead, however.

only 2 utilities surveyed completed initial testing

As of the September report, the industry average is 80% complete with initial testing, more accurately called initial assessment or Inventory. As of the December report, the averages are 96% are done with Inventory, 82% done with detailed assessment, and 44% done with the final phase, remediation and testing.

none completed contingency plans

That zero had increased to about 10% in the September report and is in full swing in the December report.

Ontario nuclear plants off-line impact capacity

See the above comments under "Borrowing surplus from others ..."

Trains not carrying coal

I found it interesting that the coal supply was shut off but the power was not interrupted. In fact, the power companies were even able to switch their supply from coal to oil and gas in time to compensate before any outage occurred.

To be elaborated