A month of Wednesdays: The best of 2009’s Wednesday Words

We all use energy, but don’t necessarily speak it. Every energy industry has its own set of technical terms and downright nonsensical jargon, so Flow’s Wednesday Words provide the definitions for energy’s complicated language.

Here are 30 of the most important energy terms we highlighted for our readers in 2009.

1. Abiogenic theory | theory of petroleum formation in which petroleum is thought to have formed from hydrocarbons trapped inside the earth while the planet was forming
2. Absorber | blackened surface in a collector that absorbs solar radiation and converts it to heat energy
3. Anemometer | wind speed is usually measured using a cup anemometer, a device that has a vertical axis and three cups which capture the wind to record the number of revolutions per minute
4. Annulus | space between two concentric lengths of pipe or between pipe and the hole in which it is located
5. Backstopping | service that provides alternate supplies of natural gas in the event that a consumer’s gas is not delivered
6. Biogenic theory | theory of petroleum formation in which the petroleum is thought to have originated from plant and animal matter that has undergone transformation by heat and pressure resulting from deep burial
7. Btu | British thermal unit is a unit of heat energy equal to the heat needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit at one atmosphere pressure (sea level)
8. Controller | device that starts up the turbine at wind speeds of above 13 kilometres per hour and shuts the machine down at speeds over 90 kilometres per hour for safety reasons
9. Diluent | liquid used to dilute bitumen to the point where it will flow; naptha (condensate) is the most commonly used diluent in the oil sands industry
10. Dosimeter | a pen-like device that measures the cumulative dose of radiation received by the device
11. Fast breeder reactor | process that allows the extraction of up to 100 times the amount of energy from uranium than is possible using a light water reactor
12. Geophone | sensitive vibration detecting instruments used in conducting seismic surveys; marine versions are known as hydrophones
13. Green credit | new way to purchase renewable electric generation that divides the generation into two separate products: the commodity energy and the renewable attributes
14. Grid | electric utility´s system for distributing power.
15. Hog fuel | wood residues like bark, sawdust, planer shavings, wood chunks processed through a chipper or mill to produce coarse chips normally used for fuel
16. Hydrotransport | process that uses hot water to transport oil sand through a pipeline to a processing plant
17. LEED | Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is the nationally accepted standard for designing and constructing green buildings with a focus on sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality
18. Mousehole | hole drilled to the side of a wellbore to hold the next joint of a drill pipe to be used; when this joint is pulled out and screwed onto the drill string, another joint of pipe is readied and slipped into the mousehole to await its turn
19. N0x | potent greenhouse gas which has a large number of natural sources and is a secondary product of the burning of organic material and fossil fuels
20. Organic theory | most widely accepted theory explaining the origins of petroleum: as organic materials become deeply buried over time, heat and pressure transform them into hydrocarbons
21. Pitch | angle of the blades on a wind turbine in such a way to keep the rotor from turning in winds that are too high or too low to produce electricity
22. Plug load analysis | method of understanding the energy needs of an individual, family or group; an essential part of selecting, sizing, and designing an appropriate renewable energy system for a building
23. Range anxiety | specific to electric car operators who don’t venture past half of their car’s available range or fear to venture more than 10 miles from the closest available charger
24. Slow pyrolysis | thermal conversion of biomass to fuel by slow heating to less than 450°C in the absence of oxygen
25. Smart grid | innovations to the energy network, such as the addition of electronics and “intelligence” to the generation, distribution and consumption of electricity
26. Sour gas | raw natural gas with a relatively high concentration of sulphur compounds, such as hydrogen sulphide, and about 30 per cent of Canada’s natural gas production is sour, most of it found in Alberta and northeastern British Columbia
27. Step-up gearbox | increases turbine electricity production in stages by increasing the number of generator revolutions produced by the rotor revolutions
28. Sweet gas | raw natural gas with a relatively low concentration of sulphur compounds, such as hydrogen sulphide
29. WECS | Wind Energy Conversion System converts wind energy to mechanical energy, making it available for powering machinery and operating electrical generators
30. Wet gas | raw natural gas with a relatively high concentration of natural gas liquids (ethane, propane, butane, pentanes and condensates)

Wednesday Words

Cluster | geographic concentration of interdependent competitive firms that do business with each other; includes upstream suppliers of materials and equipment and downstream customers

Wednesday Words

Smart growth | urban-planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in the center of a city to create compact, transit-oriented land use

Wednesday Words

Carbon accounting | management of accounting systems that calculate the size of a business’s carbon footprint, model alternative scenarios and monitor an organization’s ecological and carbon footprint

Wednesday Words

Embodied energy |
 the total energy sequestered from a stock within the earth in order to produce a specific good or service including extraction, manufacture, and transportation to market

Wednesday Words

LEED | Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is the nationally accepted standard for designing and constructing green buildings with a focus on sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality

Wednesday Words

Green ton | 2,000 pounds of undried biomass material; moisture content must be specified if green tons are used as a measure of fuel energy

Wednesday Words

Emission offset | reduction in the air pollution emissions of existing sources to compensate for emissions from new sources

Wednesday Words

Hog fuel | wood residues like bark, sawdust, planer shavings, wood chunks processed through a chipper or mill to produce coarse chips normally used for fuel

Wednesday Words

Grid | electric utility´s system for distributing power.

Smart grid | innovations to the energy network, such as the addition of electronics and “intelligence” to the generation, distribution and consumption of electricity

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