🚀 go-pugleaf

nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) wrote:

>William R Stewart  <wstewart@patriot.net> wrote:
>>Nick Pine wrote:
>>> William R Stewart  <wstewart@patriot.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> ...I usually start by asking "Are you familiar with Ohm's law?"
>>> That filters out more than half of the "energy consultants" I've met,
>>> but asking this question is sometimes embarrassing all around...
>>
>>Because that is an electrical term, as opposed to a thermodynamic term.  

OK I'll buy the idea that an energy consultant should be able to do
cookbook thermal transfer, it makes sense. What else should he know? 

Candidates:

Predictive cost ecom\nomics
Cost benefit analysis

Funding and programs

Available materails, equipment and sources

gas ducting
fluid piping
barrier design and construction details
building codes

etc etc.

Clearly no single person can have everything at his fingertips. Most
professions admit specialization (accounting, engineering and medicine
for example). Professionals, even when qualified, tend to limit their
activities to their areas of competence. Our family doctor in Sarnia
would do minor surgery in his office but sent us to specialists for
respiratory problems like asthma. The fellow we have here does the
oposite. 

One of my customers is an architect. He has designed a circulating
pump that runs off the system energy in a heating loop and controls
itself. He's also designed some interesting heat exchangers. Could he
validly call himself an energy consultant? I think so. Could he solve
the test problem? Probably not.

Another acquaintance designs power grids for industry. He is
definitely an energy consultant - all he does is show industry how to
move energy around. He doesn't need to know thermodynamics.

There's an energy consulting firm active here that works out cost
justification for cogeneration. They know where to get money and how,
what sorts of industry can use the waste heat, land management. . . .
There might not be a thermodynamically competent person in the place,
they can afford to hire someone like Stone & Webster when they want,
but they are definitely consultants in energy.

To define what an energy consultant is we would have to list
everything one might do and then decide what size of subset a person
would have to master to qualify. It is a dounting task.

All that being said, I can imagine many situations where the simple
test posted might sort the wheat from the chaff.

Peter Skelton