Showing confidence in the outcome of LPPFusion’s new experiments, The Abell Foundation has invested an additional $200,000 in LPPFusion. The Foundation, based in Baltimore Maryland, is LPPFusion’s sole institutional investor and in 2008 made a $500,000 investment that was critical to the construction of the FF-1 plasma focus device that we are now using. The Financial Committee of the Foundation, chaired by Foundation President Robert Embry, made the decision after thorough discussions between Embry and LPPFusion’s President Eric Lerner to clarify the goals of the coming experiments. As Figure 1 (prepared for Abell by LPPFusion) shows, that the goal is to demonstrate that greatly reducing impurities in the plasma will boost fusion yield back onto the scaling line that leads to the condition needed for net energy production.
LPPFusion has agreed that The Abell Foundation will have a representative on the LPPFusion Board of Advisors. The representative chosen is David Wise, President and Chief Executive Officer of Genetics and IVF Institute, who brings deep business experience, to complement that of our existing Board members.
The Board is consulted on all LPPFusion business and financial decisions. In addition to meeting by conference call when needed the Board will also be meeting semiannually to review LPPFusion’s overall business and technical situation.
The new investment, combined with other investments recently received, has come close to selling out LPFusion’s current stock offering, begun in 2011, which is now 95% complete.
At the moment, LLPFusion relies on new investments, as we have not yet been successful in obtaining new government funding. Unfortunately ARPA-E has declined to fund our work. They say that they require more evidence of the feasibility of our approach. We intend to apply again after the next set of experiments.
