UFTO Bulletin #11

August 7, 1995

To: UFTO Members:

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

•  Anderson Consulting prepared a slick report called “The Role of Broadband Communications in the Utility of the Future”, sponsored by a cable consortium and themselves. Call Tony Fakonas at 415-546-8599 to request a copy.
• Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Energy Analysis Department just released their 1994 Annual Report. I’ve already given your names and addresses to them and asked that they put you on the mailing list for it and their newsletter. Call Karen Olson if you want to change who it goes to in your company. 510-486-5974
• Does “BMP” mean anything to you? It stands for “Best Manufacturing Practices”, a program started by the Navy. They’ve taken survey teams into nearly 70 major companies, and prepared a highly detailed assessment of their processes, identifying any “best” practices they find. They just published a report on Sandia National Lab, so we can get another perspective about SNL. They have reports on all of the places they’ve studied, and a program of regional workshops, a free online database, and other kinds of outreach. Something for your industrial reps, or anyone involved in benchmarking or quality. I’d bet BMP would love to survey a utility. For information, call 1-800-4267.
• GRI goes out of its way to make information available. To get a free subscription to their magazine, GRID, call Carrie Holmes at 312-399-8100. It’s very worthwhile, especially for electric-only utilities, to keep an eye on what they’re doing, particularly in end-use technologies. (Watch out for your commercial cooling load!)
• Technology 2005 , the 6th national technology transfer conference and exposition, will be October 24-26, 1995, at McCormick Place in Chicago. It’s worth at least one day to go through the exhibits. Call 212-490-3999 for registration info. (I may attend as part of UFTO2. FYI, as of today 4 companies have said they’re renewing.)
• Attention Geo/Data/AMFM/Mapping fans: Here in Silicon Valley, there’s a project called BADGER (bay area digital geo resource), which is setting up an Internet accessible geographic visualization system for the area. The system will include a shareable base map, various attribute layers, and three prototype applications: vegetation management, fire hazard risk assessment, and storm water discharge pollution management. Check out the demo to be posted at http://www.svi.org/BADGER.html. Call Michael McRay, Smart Valley, Inc., 415-857-6968, michaelm@svi.org (or me) if you want more information.
• “As Built” drawings and updating can be a major hassle. A little company called Eos Systems in Vancouver BC has a product that gets 3-d cad data from ordinary photos, and they need help to explore utility applications. Let me know if you want to pursue this.
• Recommended reading: almost the entire July 1 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly….

EdB