Hi,

I have been thinking. During our research into the applicability of Energy Accounting into small nonprofits, me and Igor have come to a conclusion that on the short term, items like time and workforce were much more significant to a community's production capacity than energy (like electricity).

I'm thinking this is probably because in a given moment, the technology may not exist which would allow the energy to be directly utilized as production capacity, depending on the task at hand. This leaves the system with waste energy that cannot be allocated into production.

Is this a concept we want to add to our books on Energy Accounting?

LP,
Jure

Jure Sah wrote:


Yes. If we have a problem we want to look at it and see why and what we can learn from it. Also, have you looked at it in terms of exergy (i.e., the usability of the energy).

good stuff for an article?

Dr. Andrew Wallace BEng(hons) PhD EurIng wrote:


I am still somewhat unsure how to measure that.

Emergy is pretty easy with the 100W for manhours and nominal usage of electric equipment. Just time times usage.

LP,
Jure

OK, could still write an article on it?

Jure Sah wrote:

Jure, you have discovered an extremely important point: although energy is a fundamental "measuring stick", energy is often not be the greatest constraint for a particular situation. The most critical constraint might comprise another even more limited physical resource such as water. Or it might involve a more limited social resource such as goodwill or the ability to overcome social inertia.

This issue is covered by Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, which is used by numerous manufacturing firms. Goldratt's The Goal was required reading where I used to work, and I highly recommend it (despite some of the examples being a bit old). The Goal provides an excellent insight into manufacturing. Having been on teams that implemented some of its recommendations, I can confirm that much of the book (in fact the whole series) is highly realistic. The Goal is written as a novel; this is an educational approach that makes the concepts much more accessible to readers (and that we should emulate in the future, IMHO).

The problem is that this suggests that we need to keep two sets of accounts: one for energy and another for the most critical resource. Or perhaps many sets of accounts: one for each resource. Such accounting can become quickly unwieldy, a dreadfully large set of linear equations that need to be solved every time a transaction occurs to determine true costs.

Fortunately, many resources are not critically limited. A limited set of accounts can likely be developed to provide sufficiently accurate decision-making capability. Further, often the most critical constraint is limited to one organisation or locality, further simplifying the accounting. (Not every set of accounts needs to be "global"). IMHO, just three sets of accounts is already a powerful start: one for the most critical resource for the given activity, one for money (if needed), and another for an energy-related constraint.

Dr. Andrew Wallace BEng(hons) PhD EurIng wrote:

Of course.


Mark Ciotola, J.D. wrote:

A concept better known as a Resource Based Economy. The same one that we have been discussing with the rest of the community lately. What we have learned here though, is that the resources a RBE needs to keep track of, should be the critical resources.

Mark Ciotola, J.D. wrote:

To date, we have imagined a RBE to be a kind of poly-EA, basically the same system we use for EA, paralleled for each resource. The problem with this system, like with all RBE, is that there would no longer be a single pricetag on an item, but rather numerous ones. Walking into a shop and buying a tomato, may involve checking your wallet to see if you have sufficient Room Credits, Workhour Credits, Water Credits, Energy Credits, etc, etc, etc. A system that may require too much of an effort from an end-user to become widely adopted.

However programming all of these into a computerized system, which is perfectly practical in the here and now, simplifies many things. I suppose we will just have to try and see?

LP,
Jure

Interesting problem, it would be useful to know in more the detail the problems you found.

Cockshott style labour-credits come to mind... But, as mentioned, these would be a deviation from the elegance of exergy accounting. Though they could be used as a stop-gap measure before a proto-technate is automated enough?

I'm probably demonstrating my ignorance here, but there seems to be a need to develop an algorithm/equation to calculate labour-time in terms of exergy... I'd bet this is a topic discussed in the thermoeconomics literature somewhere?

Dan.

Jure Sah wrote:


Ok, it looks like we might need multiple ways to measure what the system does but I'm not sure about needing multiple "price tags". The end tag becomes one way to allocate resources form the user point of view but the technical mangers / computers do the actual allocation. So, the mangers etc. will use the full information from various accounts and the actually user may not need to know all the information.

[quote="Dr. Andrew Wallace BEng(hons) PhD EurIng" post=16912]Jure Sah wrote:


I agree that multiple price tags could be problematic. They do have a history of use, such as during wars, where there was the requirement of rationing coupons AND money being required to purchase scare goods. Yes, I would guess that most people would prefer a single required quantity of EAs or whatever.

If EAs are used both as an accounting and rationing tool, then dynamic pricing (arranged around supply and demand considerations) could take care of both accounting and rationing.