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re: "energy consultants"
17 may 1996
peter skelton wrote:
>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?
interesting question...
>candidates:
>
>predictive cost economics
>cost benefit analysis
sure. interest formulas, sinking funds, irr, etc.
>funding and programs
i guess so... not my interest, but...
>available materails, equipment and sources
sure.
>gas ducting
>fluid piping
i guess so. know a few details, and leave the rest to plumbers, etc?
("please make the ducts bigger, so we can use less powerful blowers.")
>barrier design and construction details
>building codes
>etc etc.
yes...
>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.
pediatricians can do brain surgery in my state, if they want to some
afternoon. and ee pes can design bridges. it's legal...
>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.
so do i :-)
>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.
i have a feeling he might be familiar with ohm's law...
>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.
yes, but... what we are talking about here is not "thermodynamics" in
my book. when somebody uses that term i think carnot and rankine and
maxwell and enthalpy and calculus with difficult integrals. for solar
house heating, i think ohm and arithmetic. with a few old dusty formulae
from newton. newton's law of cooling, aka ohm's law for heatflow. and
a single simple exponential formula, at best.
>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.
somebody offers a credential like that... as a "certified energy manager"?
i guess one would want to know some legal and bureaucratic stuff too,
like osha. the us patent bar exam has a lot of questions like
if you appeal a decision related to a notice of infringement in the
district court, for the third time within 7 months, and another party
or parties appeal to the assistant patent commissioner or his designated
assistant by the third tuesday in an even numbered month, how many days
do you have to file an appeal to that action, and with whom?
>all that being said, i can imagine many situations where the simple
>test posted might sort the wheat from the chaff.
me too.
nick
nicholson l. pine system design and consulting
pine associates, ltd. (610) 489-0545
821 collegeville road fax: (610) 489-7057
collegeville, pa 19426 email: nick@ece.vill.edu
microprocessor hardware, memory, asic, and computer design. telecommunication
system design. computer simulation and modeling. high performance, low cost,
residential solar heating and cogeneration system design. bsee, msee. senior
member, ieee. registered us patent agent. fluent in french.
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