Modelling the future?

What are research engineers doing when they develop models of the energy system? While modellers may or may not be designing specific technological interventions, their modelling activities play a crucial role in the progress of technological ideas and imaginaries. Contrary to the popular vision of inventors tinkering in workshops– an image promoted by appliance developers such as Trevor Bayliss– the majority of significant engineering and infrastructure developments come out of research laboratories through a lengthy process of detailed modelling. What is meant by modelling can vary extraordinary widely. Models may be calculative computing models of inputs and outputs or processes, they may be based on readings from real physical entities, simulated data generated mathematically from physical measurements, or actual material exemplarseven a whole house fitted with monitors that acts as a ‘model’ or archetype of material effects. Common to all such models is the measurement of something in the real world which produces mathematical data that can then be manipulat ed with the use of computing software, using programmes often designed and run by those researchers who we refer to, in shorthand, as modellers.