To: UFTO Subscribers

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope your holidays were good, and your in-basket isn’t filling up too fast. We had a great time here, and now it’s time to get UFTO back into high gear.

1. Expect to hear soon from NREL about an internal program to develop more efficient gas jet ejectors. They’re looking for partners, and I gave them your names, along with a letter of introduction.

I also gave your names to Dr. Hanafy Meleis, of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at NIST, and asked him to send you information about a workshop he and Dave Cain at EPRI are sponsoring January 30-31 in Atlanta on Information and Telecommunications Technology for U.S. Utilities, and open forum to discuss technical, strategic and economic issues, and needed R&D. Have a look, and see if someone from your company should be there.

2. A revised roster of subscribers is enclosed. Welcome to Bill Muston at Texas Utilities, and Daniel Madet of the R&D Division of Electricite de France (office in Palo Alto!).

3. Plans for January include:

– Writing up the full report for NREL

– On Site Briefings for several more subscriber utilities (3 of you have already completed this).

– Site visits to LBL and possibly another lab.

– Ongoing follow-up

4. If you (or anyone from your company) will be in California for EPRI meetings later this month, let’s try to get together for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and/or for visits to the various startups I’ve been telling you about.

5. By the end of February at the latest, I’d like to try to reach agreement about the scope of this year’s program, and which labs will be included in our program. I’ll propose a list in the next few weeks.

One very important question– Are we going to get together as a group, and if so, when? How does mid to late March sound? Any volunteers to host such a meeting? What are your thoughts about the program or what we’d try to accomplish? I’m sure we could get some Lab (and DOE) representatives who would welcome the opportunity to meet with us and make a presentation.

6. Do you (or someone from your company) want to pay a visit to one of the labs? We found followup visits to be very valuable. Dave Odor at PSI has already said he wants to go to NREL, perhaps in March or April. Want to join us? Let me know.

Sincerely, EdB

PS: I just signed up with a local internet provider, giving me full directaccess via Mosaic. It’s very exciting, but I can see it’s easy to spend far too much time “net-surfing”. Any of you have experience on the net? Any good sites for information on energy technology?