UFTO Bulletin #7

May 3, 1995

To: UFTO Subscribers

. . in this issue: . . . . . . . . .

1. We’ve finished all the briefings and needs assessments at your companies. Enclosed please note the draft “Utility Needs” memo to give to our contacts at the National Labs, so they can respond. Please get your comments or changes to me ASAP.

2. Also enclosed — a memo detailing the terms we talked about at our meeting in Golden for official close- out of the 94-95 program. Let me know if you have any concerns about it, and if it looks right to you, please sign and return to me.

3. I visited Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) in Richland WA, adjacent to but separate from the infamous Hanford Site. PNL is run by Battelle Memorial Institute, and has a unique contractual arrangement with DOE where they can do work either as a national lab or as a private firm.

They’ve got a lot of really exciting work, and they’re committed to working with the utility industry, based on a long history with BPA and others. Some of you may know Merwyn Brown, formerly of PG&E’s R&D Dept., who joined PNL recently as an Assoc. Director of the Energy Programs, who’ll give them the insights and direction they need to make it happen. Merwyn, and with our main contact Carl Imhoff, are really excited about the opportunity that UFTO gives them to make contact with utilities.

Pending my major writeup for PNL (along with LANL, Sandia and Berkeley), some “UFTO Flash” highlights are attached.

4. Any interest in the special situations at Los Alamos and Sandia that I told you about last month? A few of you have made contact about them, but the response hasn’t been overwhelming (e.g., no inquiries about “HyMelt”, which I thought looked really interesting). Either the “Action Gap” is a bigger problem than we thought, or these deals aren’t on target and maybe I need to recalibrate? Comments?

By the way, I now have the Los Alamos discussion paper on their PEM fuel cell. If you didn’t get a copy directly from them and you’d like to have one, let me know.

5. DOE is supposed to announce a major reorganization this week. The Office of Utility Technology (OUT) has been working on it’s own reorg. They had scheduled a Stakeholder’s Meeting for June 6, but it will probably be postponed until September. Previous meetings have been notably short on utility representation, but the problem’s been recognized, and through our contacts at PNL, UFTO members will be the among the first to be invited.

(Those who attended the DOE Industrial meeting in DC this week, I hope you’ll pass along any impressions, news and information. Thanks.)

6. I’ll be gone May 8-23. Please feel free to send mail, email, fax or voice mail messages in my absence, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I return.