Fuel efficiency for `equipment`

Conventions
1

Hi folks, I’m working on an Energy Convention as part of the integration with Cool Farm Platform, a green house gas calculation tools. See energy.md [at this link]( User Facing Documentation/Convention Documentation · main · our-sci / Conventions / conventions-under-development · GitLab ) if you want to see what’s in it so far. For the curious, there’s also a nice cost.md Cost Convention you can review which uses the quantity–price object.

My Question / Request / Prompt: Why is there no energy_consumption type field associated with equipment? This would make it really easy to estimate log by log energy use. For example:

  1. Fuel use by tractor in a Harvest Log. Pull:
    1. Miles driven (quantity associated with the log) X
    2. Energy consumption (attribute in tractor asset) =
    3. Fuel used (save as quantity associated with log).
  2. Energy (kWh) used by pump in an Irrigation Log. Pull:
    1. Irrigation time (quantity associated with log) X
    2. Energy consumption (attribute in pump asset) =
    3. Energy used (save as quantity associated with log).

Here’s another identical case which would be really critical for other (non-energy) cases but the same pattern

  1. Labor cost used for Sarah in Activity Log (weeding). Pull:
    1. Work time (quantity associated with log) X
    2. Sarah’s hourly rate (attribute in user entry for Sarah) =
    3. Labor cost (save as quantity associated with log).

PS I recognize that this last example would be using the owner relationship which isn’t defined today as the person who did the work, definitely needs to be fleshed out, but you’re seeing the pattern hopefully.

The point is often if an asset holds some key information, it can really simplify and enable the calculation of useful information about cost, energy use, and probably other things.

On the flip side, I know we don’t want to “pollute” the attributes with things, and that can lead to a lot of unnecessary bulk. But at the same time, we haven’t provided assets the ability to use quantities, thus attributes is the only place to go right now.

I definitely could see a reasonable argument to be made to just add these as attributes, though of course it’s not just one field, it’s three… for fuel efficiency it’s:

  • Value (eg 10)
  • Energy type (eg gallons)
  • Distance (eg miles)

For the labor example it’s similar but also 3 items.

  • Value (eg 22.50)
  • Currency (eg $)
  • Time (eg hour).

So what do folks think?

2 Likes
2

Hit enter to quick. One more thought.

This is similar to the how farmOS handles pricing, where it auto-calculates the the final price in the quantity–price… I think it’s helpful to copy in the actual values so logs can be independent of their relationship to source material which can change.

So copy in the fuel efficiency and mileage into the log from the asset as a source, and then auto-calculate use from there. I think (??) this feels like how the price quantity works.

Same could be done for Labor (maybe that already works actually?).

maybe I’m rambling at this point.

3

Sounds like a great idea for a contrib module to provide something like this. That module could also encapsulate the logic necessary for estimating energy use, as well as reports and UI to display that information where it is most useful/relevant.

Here are some relevant discussions:

It’s an interesting idea to consider time tracking and equipment resource use together. I think in practice the UI requirements may end up being different, but perhaps some of the logic underneath is similar enough to be shared… :thinking:

1 Like