Energy Acronyms

Energy Acronyms, the easiest way to find the meaning of energy related acronyms and abbreviations on the web.

Jeff Bell is the creator of www.energyacronyms.com a recently launched website dubbed "A Free Resource for Energy Professionals". We had the chance to interview Bell to talk about his web resource.

thegreenpages: So Jeff, what is your new site about and why did you build it?

Bell: I got the idea because I work in the energy industry and I was continually encountering incomprehensible groups of letters in articles or reports. At one point I started keeping track of them and every time I encountered a new acronym I didn’t know I would add it to my list for future reference. Then I thought to myself: "hey I bet you I’m not the only person that might find this list handy"…I’m going to share it. So I built my simple site (with the help of a few friends). It is basically an online dictionary of obscure and not so obscure energy-related terms.

thegreenpages: Is there a need for this type of resource?

Bell: I don’t know if anyone agrees there is a need but that’s not the point. As long as I keep encountering new BPDs and DSOs and LUECs and SOFCs I will keep adding them to my list…at the very least it will be useful to one person. Having said that I hope it could also be useful to students studying energy and anyone who does a lot of reading about energy issues…journalists, market researchers, engineers, civil servants etc.

thegreenpages: what has been the response so far?

Bell: Do you mean besides people calling me a huge nerd? To be perfectly honest so far response has been limited but I think that’s because so far I have done a poor job even telling people that the site exists. One thing I wanted to do was let other people, using the "suggest" function, add to my list if they noticed some acronyms that weren’t in there that should be. So far no one’s really taken me up on that offer. In general I think I need to recruit some help to get the word out. If you’re reading this and you end up thinking the site is useful please pass on the link!

thegreenpages: What is the most searched energy acronym so far?

Bell: By far the most popular group of letters that people appear to want to decipher is "SOYA".  It stands for "spell out your acronyms"!

thegreenpages: Any future plans or improvements for the web site. Got any new projects on the go?

Bell: Eventually I think it would be good to get other languages in there too…so far they are almost all English. Definitions of all the stuff in there would also be good but that would take a lot of work. If anyone has any ideas I am open to them. I’m sure things will evolve over the long term and I am happy with an approach of slow continued tinkering.

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Energy Acronyms (http://energyacronyms.com/) is part of thegreenpages.ca network