Talking Energy

Before the inevitable rush of questions as to the choice in title begins, I would like to point out how this homely little blog is following a long and storied tradition of using acronyms (and faux acronyms) in energy circles.

Any of these familiar? The top one should be to almost every American, given how much of a stir its former CEO caused during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. So should the bottom one, if only because it's a good bet you have some of their light bulbs in your house. The middle one is well known to most southeastern Michigan residents because, well, DTE is their power utility.

Here are some other energy companies whose names look like (or are) acronyms:

SCANA (utility)
AGL Resources (utility)
EQT Corporation (natural gas extraction)
REC (solar panels)
XTO Energy (oil and natural gas extraction)
OCI Company (solar panels)
NRG Energy (utility)
APS (Arizona Public Service) (utility)
SRP (Salt River Project) (utility)
UGI Corporation (utility)

So on and so forth...

As you can see, energy people like acronyms. Not just for company names, but for technologies too. Energy agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission love these sorts of acronyms. If acronyms for technical terms were a sea they would swim in them everyday. Acronyms are so common that the State of California's Energy Commission has an entire webpage devoted to acronyms. You can go there and search every acronym from A (ampere) to ZDMH ("mechanically scribed, deep-domain refined core steel").

I worked in a metallurgical engineering department for a year and have no idea what that last one means.

So, if my blog title seems a little crass, or just too cheeky, remember it's not meant to be an insult, just a slight jab at a very strange love affair.



Correction (5:54PM Pacific Standard Time): The year of the BP oil spill was corrected to 2010.

Energy is "good to think with"

When is the last time you can remember cursing out a piece of technology? A microwave, or an oven? In my case, anger usually involves my "Wilson" from the movie Castaway - a little smart meter which, aside from sitting there blinking the time at me, reminds me all too often (1) how hot it is in Phoenix, and (2) how much of my stipend goes towards paying for electricity.

So you could say we humans (at least those of us in the developed world) have a weird relationship with technology. On one hand we get annoyed when it does not work, but on the other it awes us when it does. We give our cars names (mine is Ally, something my best friend Allison does not appreciate), and then swear at them when they do not work right.

Why though? Is it something about technologies themselves?

Maybe it is something deeper than technology. Maybe it has something to do with what makes technologies work.

Work is a funny word, we use it all the time but really never think about what the word means. When you turn on your smartphone after dropping it, you do not say it is functioning... you say its working. We like when things work for us, and get angry at them when they don't.

Work, though, is not just about things doing what we want them to do, its about things utilizing energy to do what we want them to do.

So, when you curse out your toaster for burning your everything bagel and not working right, you are cursing out the fact the technology did not use energy the way you wanted it to.

The famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss once said that sex was "good to think with". Sandra Harding said the same thing about science, oddly enough, in relation to sex. So when I say energy is"good to think with" I mean that looking at how we talk about energy tells us a lot about who we are.

Now, this page is nowhere near as heady an endeavor. Just a fun exploration of the weird ways we talk about energy. From giving kids tours of nuclear power plants and letting them put on radiation suits to commercials about net metering that belong with Leave it to Beaver and President Eisenhower, some of the things people say about energy are so bizarre they have to be seen next to each other. 

A word of caution: if you are expecting this to be a space where I criticize the past in favor of some energy future full of technologies that will free the world from [insert crisis here], I am sorry to say you will be disappointed. The funny thing about energy technologies is that while the designs may change, the fact people built them does not.

Anyways, people are much more interesting than toasters.