5 December 2001 Senator Harry Reid Dear Senator Reid: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-United States of America (IEEE-USA) requests your action to correct a reduction in funding of a critical DOE program in electric power reliability. As a consequence of pressures from constituent project priorities, the Department of Energy's Electric Energy Systems program suffered an unfortunate reduction of $13.2 million (reducing the budget from $52.7 million to $38.5 million) in the Energy and Water Appropriation Bill. Within the Electric Energy Systems budget in 2001, besides important work in superconductivity and storage, is $8.9 million for distributed energy resources and electric system reliability. These small DOE programs are the only significant R&D in the Federal agencies directed at the security and reliability of electric power. This problem needs to be resolved in a supplement to an appropriation bill in THIS session of Congress to assure continuity and avoid disrupting progress in these critical programs. Right behind our war effort, it is difficult to find a higher national priority than the reliability and security of our national electric grid. The reliability problems experienced in California and elsewhere in the country in recent years speak volumes about the need for funding of research to improve the security and reliability of electric power. The National Policy Task Force Report recommends expanding and strengthening this area of research and development. The soon to be completed National Transmission Grid Study is certain to recommend an increase in this area. Unless action is taken in this session, this critical research will suffer a major reduction when all logic would dictate that the funding be increased! This problem must be corrected. The following, inserted in an appropriation bill that will pass in this session would fix this problem (perhaps as a supplement to the Defense Appropriations Bill):
If an offset is necessary, we respectfully request that it not come from the other programs in this line item. If you have any questions, please contact Bill Williams at 202 530-8331 or bill.williams@ieee.org. Your attention to this important matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Ned
R. Sauthoff, Ph.D.
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