electrickery the social life of energy v4
TRANSCRIPT
ElectrickeryThe Social Life of Energy
Dr Tom Roberts and Dr Kevin BurchellKingston University
Track 38 Energy, practice and personal lives: design and displacement in the everyday - I
October 19th 2012, Biennial Conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2012
Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Energy and measurement
•“You can’t change what you don’t measure”...•Measurement and energy literacy is crucial but on their own are insufficient for change•Need to understand energy qualitatively as well as quantitatively • Energy needs to be better understood as a social phenomenon
E=MC2
FACTS...
Smart Communities
• Team: Ruth Rettie, Kevin Burchell and Tom Roberts
• Community action project with the objective of energy consumption reduction (in homes and in a school)
• Close relationship between interrelated theory and practice (action research)
Practice theory
Social theories of learning
Social norm theory
Community action theory
• Team of local project partners
• Lots of community engagement
www.smartcommunities.org.uk
Community action
Historical ideas of energy
• Corporeal energy – “Labour united the human and animal bodies” - ‘working like a horse’, ‘feeling his oats’, and ‘working in the traces’ (Nye,1998)
• 1590s – Galileo’s experiments• 1676 – Leibniz and ‘vis viva’• 1807 – Thomas Young and ‘energy’• 1840s – law of conservation of energy• energy – from theoretical construct to
industrial reality
Modern industrial
idea of energy
masks a much
richer past
Dr Johnson’s dictionary in 1746
describes electricity as:
“A property in some bodies, whereby
when rubbed so as to grow warm, they
draw little bits of paper, or such-like
substances to them”
Social classifications / folk quanta of energy
• “Consumers measure energy using techniques that differ from those of professional energy analysts. We refer to these informal measurement techniques as folk quantification.” (Kempton and Montgomery, 1983)
• Petrol easier than electricity – miles per gallon a good folk quanta
• £ and p
I’m using how much £!?
Vampire consumption – what
bleeds away in the night
Comparative feedback “Electricity yes, we’re below... the top 20%”
We’re a 50 kwh a week household
Social classifications / folk quanta of
energy
energy, from Greek energeia, „activity‟,
from energos, „being in action‟
POTENTIAL TECHNOLOGY KINAESTHETIC CORPOREAL AFFECTUAL
Wood etcMaking an
activity easierMovement
Potential /
ExhaustionFuel bills £
Fossil fuels Electric car Cycling WorkMiles per
gallon
ElectricityPower stations
Prancing horse Warmth Waste
Forces Solar power Surfing Life force Firemaking
Oil, coal, natural gas, or water
behind a dam are all valued
primarily for their energy
potential, not for the specific
form that the matter takes. If
we value something for its
form, it is regarded as matter;
but if we value it for the work it
can do, we call it ‘energy’
(Adams, 1988)
Light
MPA Lighting makes me feel less lonely in a big house? And you don’t agree with that, lighting makes me feel less... no?
MFA Why does it, do you think, could you elaborate, what... how does it make you feel?
FPA Well, I think it just sort of, a feeling of optimism with the light on, I think, if it’s all sort of, dull and dingy, or you know, it’s... especially in the winter, you know, the winter evenings, when they’re getting dull and dark, I think if you put a light on, it cheers you up.
MPA It cheers you up.
The social life of energy Community workshops
U5 I think, also, if you’ve got something
like a log fire, just the sight of those flames
has a psychological effect to make you feel
warmer ...Yes, there is the radiant heat but I
think you get an extra boost [overtalking].
U1 The cosiness, perhaps.
U5 The fact is, that you tell yourself you
are cosy. Because [overtalking] fires, you don’t
have to get the heat from them, [overtalking] so
you look at the flames and you will feel warmer
with no heating on.
Heat
The social life of energy Community workshops
Visual and thermoception
Thermal imaging parties
What Watt?• 8 W – human-powered equipment using a hand crank
• 14 W – power consumption of a typical household compact fluorescent light bulb
• 20–40 W – power consumption of the human brain
• 60 W – power consumption of a typical household incandescent light bulb
• 100 W – metabolic rate of an adult human body
• 120 W – electric power output of 1 m2 solar panel in full sunlight
• 130 W – peak power consumption of a Pentium 4 CPU
• 500 W – power output (useful work plus heat) of a person working hard physically
• 745.7 W – units: 1 horsepower
• 750 W – amount of sunshine falling on a square metre of the Earth's surface
• kilowatt (103 watts)
• 1 kW to 3 kW – heat output of a domestic electric kettle
• 1.1 kW – power of a microwave oven
• 10.0 kW (87,216 kWh/year) – average power consumption per person in the US (2008)
• 16–32 kW – average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer
• 40 kW to 200 kW – approximate range of power output of typical automobiles
• 450 kW – approximate maxi power output of a large lorry
• megawatt (106 watts)
• 1.5 MW – peak power output of GE's standard wind turbine
• 2.5 MW – peak power output of a blue whale
• 3 MW – mechanical power output of a diesel locomotive
• 12.2 MW – approx power available to a Eurostar 20-carriage train
Kinesthetics: what do watts feellike?
‘... kinaesthetic investments (such as walking, bicycling, riding a
train or being in a car) orient us toward the material affordances of
the world around us in particular ways, and these orientations
generate emotional geographies’ (Sheller 2005)
Getting Ed Davey MP (Secretary of State for Energy
and Climate Change and Zac Goldsmith MP to
generate some power
Energy at school
• Working with estates manager
– ecodriver
– Environmental audit
• Curriculum
– ecodriver
– Homework
• School life
– Ecodriver/energy-o-meter
– Energy enforcer
– Green cup
Drama: the energy collector
“Imagine what would happen if
someone came along and took away all
the energy in the world...”
Once upon a time, a cloud shape ship hovered
over Earth. The ship belonged to The Energy
Collector, a small but terrifying man...
http://www.energycollector.org/part1.html
1. Folk quanta important to behavioural change agenda. Not just a case of more and better measurement
2. Broader notion of energy literacy required
3. Corporeal, kinesthetic and dramatic can be powerful tools of engagement
Conclusions
