Real-Life Decision Making
Alternative energy researchers are always trying to improve energy efficiency
and keep costs down. In order to prove that the new technology is actually
saving energy, researchers must have something to compare it to. They need
to know how much energy is being used by current "traditional" energy sources.
"If an area of research is truly cutting-edge, you will be required to
try to develop solutions where there is no established research to fall back
on," says Craig Dunn. He is the president of WellDunn Consulting, a geological
consulting firm.
You are an alternative energy entrepreneur. Your company is trying to help
the oil industry use less fuel in their drilling applications. You've been
researching how to make engines more efficient. One thing you are trying is
to use technology that injects hydrogen and oxygen gas to improve fuel efficiency.
This has worked well in your lab, but you need to prove it works in the
field. To prove it works, you need to compare how much fuel the engine uses
regularly to how much fuel it uses with your injection technology.
You go to the oil industry to find out how much fuel they use and how they
measure the fuel use. But there's a problem. There is no reliable solution
for calculating the fuel use in drilling applications. The industry does not
use any measuring technology, so you have nothing to compare your technology
to. There is no source for your all-important baseline data!
When you planned this project, you did not expect this problem. Now it
threatens to halt your research. You have some big decisions to make about
how you are going to move forward with this project.
You can continue work in the lab and leave the fuel measuring problem up
to the oil industry. Research in the field will be expensive, it will take
a lot of time and it was not part of your plan. Going back to the field would
be a step back in your research and you want to be moving forward. But you
won't have any baseline data from the field to compare your results to. This
makes it difficult to prove the benefits of your technology.
Or you can do your own research in the field about technology options for
calculating fuel usage. Then you would need to use this technology to create
baseline data for comparison. It will be time-consuming and an expense you
had not bargained for. But it will help to prove your technology is efficient.
What do you do?