Spreadsheet: diana_scholtes__8598__Time Zone Survey Results
Sheet: Sheet1

Survey for [NAME] to Move WSCC Scheduling to PST
Company | Question 1- Does your company support moving to PST as the standard scheduling time? | Question 2-What are the estimated costs to your company to make this change? | Question 3- What are the estimated costs to your company to keep the status quo? | Question 4- What are the implementation issues for your company? | Question 5- If you don’t support PST, what scheduling standard would you support? | Comments
Avista | We support moving to PST or PPT, prefer PST. | As a PPT entity, none expected. | The cost of one full-time employee. | None
BPA | Not at this time | Cost is not the deterrent | None | We are participating in a great deal of change in the industry, including full E-tag implementation, converting to a transaction based scheduling system and RTO development.  Our position is that we should complete the work in progress and bring closure to issues that are before us, before we introduce a new substantial change like conversion to PST.  BPAT will be staying informed and involved in the direction of FERC rulings for RTOs and NERC policy developments for Electronic Scheduling.  Based on these developments we will determine whether supporting the change to PST for WSCC is the right decision. | PPT
CRSP Energy & Marketing | The CRSP Energy Management and Marketing Office (Merchant) of Western Area Power Administration supports moving to a single WSCC wide common operating time zone.  The CRSP-EMMO also supports the notion, as stated in your letter, that there would be no seasonal conversion between standard and advanced time.  Since this office operates in multiple time zones this office would prefer the establishment of a more central time zone than PST but that is a secondary concern to the establishment of a standard time. | Setting a cost for this change is not practicable with this short notice.  The change must be evaluated although I suspect that there will be implementation costs which must be considered; depending on the changes which must be made.  These costs may be related to necessary changes in metering, SCADA, internal accounting and reporting systems, generation stations, etc. | None | The implementation time frame established to adopt a singular operational time would be the main factor regarding our ability to implement a policy change such as this.  This office will require time to evaluate the implications and them have time to implement the programming changes which will be required.  With all the other changes taking place, we would not be capable of changing on a short timetable. | A more centralized time would be more practicable for this region.  We operate in central, mountain, and pacific time zones.
Duke Energy | Yes | None to speak of | Costs are minimal, we just have to manage the 25-hour day | None |  | Several entities would experience a cost to reprogram (or inactivate programming) that is currently in place.  While we are a marketer, we do dispatch generation as well.  One question we’d ask is – if we were creating this industry today, would we use a single, none changing time zone – I think the answer would be yes.
El Paso | Our  first choice would be GMT for the whole country, but if that doesn’t work, PST would work. | Inconsequential | Minimal unless there are scheduling errors | None | GMT
Eugene Water & Electric Board | No | Rough guess is $10,000 | Zero | Our SCADA system and connecting scheduling systems would need to be re-programmed to accommodate. | Pacific Prevailing Time.
Farmington Electric Utility System | No – but would support a universal time such as UTC. | None – infrastructure already in place. | Would need a program to convert local time to standard scheduling time. | Universal time ( zulu time ).
Glendale Water & Power | Depends on our control area provider (LADWP). I believe the position Glendale Water and Power would take is one of – anything that makes scheduling on the 23/25 hour days work smoother, on behalf  of all WSCC participants, would be welcomed. | Unknown at this time, but would appear to be minimal to implement | Minimal | Coordinating schedules with our control area provider (LADWP). | Would support PST.
IdaCorp Energy | Yes.  It would save us time and money.  It would also help the entire WSCC in moving towards one standard.  Scheduling systems would also be easier to implement and maintain. | None.  Current systems are already in place. | It is difficult to quantify.  All departments must incur costs to customize or modify new or existing systems.  There are also costs associated with reliability. | None | N/A
Los Alamos County | Yes; however, LAC would prefer MST | Very little | Lost time and phone costs trying to unravel scheduling errors due to different time bases. | LAC can accommodate a change to PST with ease since we now schedule in MST. | LAC would prefer MST.
Los Angeles Department of Water & Power | No | Three person-month of programming changes to the existing EMS and Energy Accounting programs.  We agree that changing to a standard time is a good idea and we probably would support either PST or CST.  However, we just cannot spare the limited personnel we have at this time to make the proposed changes (see #4).  Training of new personnel to do this highly technical work in the time frame stated (April 2001 as discussed in the [NAME] meeting) is very difficult if not impossible. | The costs associated with the time changes, twice a year. | We are in the process of purchasing a new EMS and a new scheduling system which hopefully will allow multiple scheduling times.  The new EMS will be on line in two years and the new scheduling system in three years.  Major effort is needed if we are to change the existing EMS system to implement the PST standard scheduling time on a very old system that we will soon abandon.  We just do not have the staff to do it. | Pacific Prevailing Time (PPT).  This will present the least interruption to the existing EMS and it’s also the standard of choice for most agencies as voted in the [NAME] meeting on 8/23-8/24/01.
Mirant | We would strongly support PPT as this aligns with the trading market and would be easy for everyone to utilize.  We would also support PST as a step in the right direction (standardization alone is progress), although not as strongly as PPT. | Minimal, a few thousand at most. | I’d estimate $50,000 per year in confusion costs alone. | Minimal | Previously answered.  We realize PST eliminates the two odd hours per year associated with daylight savings time, but the advantages of being in synch the other 8, 758 hours of the year far outweigh this advantage.
Montana Power Company | MPC Transmission would support moving to a standard pre-scheduling and hour ahead time.  It would be easier for MPC if the standard time would be Mountain Prevailing Time since we check out with adjacent control areas in both the Central and Pacific Time zones. | Minimal |  | Since MPC is already checking pre schedules in three time zones and our ems and pre scheduling system accommodates this, we feel there would be very few hurdles to moving to a standard time. | Mountain prevailing time.
PacifiCorp | Yes | Unknown, but IT estimates minimum cost. | Mismatched schedules due to time zones. | IT staffs available.
PPL Montana, LLC | PPLM supports moving to PST as the standard scheduling time with an appropriate transition timetable. | No cost estimate, but relatively low cost to implement. | No cost estimate | Conversion of scheduling systems to one time zone.
PRPA | No | 65000 | None | Staffing, work schedules, training, coordination between SCADA and scheduling. | If we are going to support one-time zone scheduling, we would support one time zone for all of NERC, not just WSCC.  Central time makes the most sense.  Why should the rest of us have to jump through hoops to support the west coast?
Public Service Company of New Mexico | Yes, PNM-Control Area and Transmission does support moving to a Standard Scheduling Time, and PST is a compromise that we could support. | Estimated expense to modify software is between $25k to $75k. | To maintain [NAME] will maintain the costs of inadvertent transactions and the After-The-Fact manpower expense of reconciling these scheduling problems caused by having multiple time zones. | The implementation time frame is the greatest concern,  our IS department estimates that it will take at least 6 months to make all the software changes to accommodate PST as our standard.
Public Utility District of Pend Oreille | Yes | 0 | 0 | None
Reliant | Yes | Minimal costs for slight software modifications. | None | None
Sacramento Municipal Utility District | Yes – A single schedule in the WSCC would simplify scheduling, but create other problems. These additional issues would include differences between the Energy Management Systems (EMS), that run the generation translating, a time that is not local time to the EMS system. There are also after the fact issues.  I think that if we went to a single time we would need to address the other issues as well.  The answer is actually to operate the entire US on a Zulu time scenario for all ..not just scheduling. That has been presented many times and always defeated.  Although I support a ZULU time, I don’t think that it will ever pass. | A ball park figure is $100,000 | Zero costs | As stated in item 1:  EMS Seams issues, After the fact issues,  metering and system implementation issues
Seattle City Light Marketing | Yes | Minimal | Minimal | None | N/A
Sierra Pacific Power Company | No | N/A | Zero | SPPC would like to stay with PPT as we have to keep things simple and as the majority of WSCC control areas are on, and as has always been traded. | PPT
Tuscon Electric | TEP could support PST as the standard scheduling time. | Can’t quantify, but probably low. | Same as number 2. | Nothing significant
Turlock Irrigation District | NO.   We would prefer to utilize PST and PDST as is the case today.  All of our computer programs used today have this capability. | IF the district were to change to PST only, there would be minimal costs associated with that move.   However, all historical data will not match the new time usage causing confusion and the ability to utilize historical data to forecast would provide poor forecasts. | There would be NO costs to keep status quo. | Discussed in question 2 above.   In addition, all operations would have the tendancy to get confused as the scheduling times would not match the local clock time during the April - Oct time frame. | Keep using PST and PDST as it is currently implemented.
UAMPS | Only if it were to be Industry wide, covering all the Western States | It is hard to estimate the cost of this change, our biggest problem would be the man power to get the changes made to our log so that it would still correspond to our members hourly needs because I don’t think we could ever get them converted to PST. | Minimal as everything we have is set up to work in MPT and we go either way on the log depending on who we are dealing with. | Being able to implement in a timely manner with the manpower we have available. | Whatever the industry were to agree upon, as long as it was standard throughout the region.
WACM | WACM can support Pacific Standard Time as a standardized scheduling time.  However, we would prefer to standardize to the Central Standard Time, as a NERC-wide standard. | Our main programming costs would be for scheduling, accounting, and billing programs. | There is no additional cost associated with maintaining status quo. | WACM would face training and implementation issues.  We would need to allow adequate programming time, training time, and notification to entities in the eastern interconnection. | WACM would be fully supportive of using Central Time Zone as a standard.  WACM feels that central standard time can be supported NERC-wide.
WAPA | WALC supports PST scheduling, accounting between all WSCC control areas/entities. WALC prefers not to apply PSAT or Pacific Advance Standard Time, application of the advance time does nothing for the industry and does nothing to gain consensus among the three zones within WSCC.  The market which have been established since open access can as easily adapt to a standard PST time in the west as can all the non PSAT reliability and merchant companies.  The best compromise for all concerned is PST because of the load not PSAT. | The cost of reprogramming our energy management systems, billing interfaces, creating metering conversion to apply to power accounting.  The cost is oriented around programming and associated report adjustments. | No costs keeping status quo | Enough advance programming time, enough reliability & merchant training time. | WALC would support PST and MST and CST, but not PSAT, MSAT, CSAT.  Advance standard time creates an unneeded obstacle and unnecessarily inhibits interchange scheduling and accounting standards in the Western United States by continue to introduce a time change twice each year.
[NAME] | PSCo B8Merchant supports adopting a standard scheduling time for all aspects of transaction tracking (scheduling, dispatch, accounting, billing and reporting).  Currently, much scheduling is done in PST/PPT, yet most NERC Reporting is still done in CST.  Any time zone standard should apply across the board to be truly effective.  PSCo Merchant also suggests that any time zone standard should apply to both power and trans scheduling. | PSCo WMIC Answer: Negligible for the Merchant Function. | PSCo WMIC Answer: Not Available | Nothing major discernable at this time internally; however, everyone must implement, or it doesn’t work.