US Energy consumption.

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I was trying to follow a lecture about energy needs the other day, and make sense of the speaker's numbers. I know most energy statistics, but his numbers were not adding up. I started wishing I had an energy "crib sheet" with simply the big numbers to help me understand. So, I made one. Here it is. This is the amount of energy the US used in October of 2009. I did not make any correlations between units or types, these are the raw figures. Here is this country's overall energy use:

U.S. Energy use for the month of October 2009.

Type of energy	Trillions of BTU's	Millions of Megawatt Hours	Amount
Electricity	1,200	351	Not Applicable
Natural Gas	1,800	527	1.8 Trillion Cubic Feet
Gasoline	1,364	399	11 Billion Gallons
Diesel Fuel	700	205	6.2 Billion Gallons
Totals	5,064	1,482

 (The amount column is the amount of the fossil fuel we used. Electricity is generated by various means. It is an energy carrier, not a fuel.)

Those are BIG numbers. To clarify the units, the totals equal:

5,064,000,000,000,000 BTUs. and 1,482,000,000,000 Kilowatt hours.

If that were YOUR electric bill for October, at ten cents per kWh, the amount due would be: $148,200,000,000.00! That is 148 Billion dollars. Your electric rate may vary.

According to the EIA, on a BTU Basis, the US uses 21% of the worlds energy. So, multiply those numbers by five and you know (roughly) how much the world uses.

One final note on electrical generation.

This country has slightly more than 1,000,000 megawatts (1,000 GigaWatts) of nameplate generation capacity installed. Of that total, about 550,000 megawatts is available at any one time. The rest is down for maintenance, repairs or other factors. There are 720 hours in a month. So we can actually generate about 396 Million Megawatt Hours each month.

Comments

[GridWatch]

Thanks for the energy numbers, they are impressive. We just happen to have an electric energy clock on our website, and are glad to have others post it on their site for free. It's available at gridwatch.org

[utah lodging]

People consumed a surprising amount of energy everyday, this may help in adding more power and efficiency.

[cincinnati carpet cleaning]

China has overtaken the US as the world's biggest consumer of energy, according to preliminary data from the IEA.

[Electrician]

Seeing those numbers just brings home the fact that we need to invest more in renewable energy sources.

[Projector Headlights]

If that would be the case, I would have to be a multimillionaire. Those numbers are horrifying indeed. Everyone should play their part in the society in preserving energy even if it's just turning of your lights.

[Sandrix]

A wind turbine will not make a singfiicant dent in your electric bill unless you live in a place where the wind blows pretty hard most of the time. Even in a very windy location, it may take 10 years for to generate enough power to pay for the initial cost. Windmills are designed to produce maximum power at a particular wind speed; at half that speed, they produce only one eighth as much power. Here's a link for some commercially available windmills. If you build your own, it will probably be much less efficient. In most cases, the price tag does not include a tower or installation. Check your electric bill to see how many kilowatt hours you use during your windy season. Divide by the number of hours in the billing period to get the average power consumption. Before deciding on a windmill, you should compare against other options. In urban communities with lots of sunshine, solar is best. Gasification is a much more attractive option for areas that don't get much wind or sunshine. However, the gas turbines that go with them tend to be pretty noisy, so they are not suitable for crowded urban communities.

[Rosa]

risks it costs over $1 million USD to put up ONE winldiml so.. when you see 500 or 600 or 800 of them in a big field, you can calculate the cost One of them produces enough electricity to power, what . 5 houses? of all of the winldimls we have ALLLL OVER the us . thousands .. it only accounts for 1% of our energy. also, they are cool, but it sucks having millions of 400 foot tall winldimls dotting the what would otherwise be a beautiful landscape. also, there are only certain places in the world, certain types of landscapes that are truly conducive of having winldimls. and of those places, most of them have them already. and even there, they don't ALL ALWAYS spin.. when they aren't spinning, they aren't producing.benefits . that's 1% less coal that we have to burn. but realistically, there doesn't HAVE to be ANY coal burned at this point. it could all be nuclear. meltdowns are very very very very very very very very very very very unlikely. the only reason they've ever had one was because the staff there didn't keep up with the equipment because they didn't feel they had to.. and of course there was a meltdown. The problem is the waste it produces. germany subsidizes solar power they allow the sale of solar energy by the public. because of that, there are TONS AND TONS AND TONS of solar panels all over the place, and about 46% of their energy COMES from solar whereas 2% of the US's power comes from solar. problem is, if it's dark, it's not producing there are ways to convertt water into electricity, but governments won't allow it. sea water could be filtered, have electrolites added, hydrolicized to an "unstable" liquid, and burned by machines that generate electricity there's an over abundance of sea water, and hell the level is getting higher each year is it not? the only biproduct of such a thing would be atomized water not co2.

[Emily]

They are likely tainlkg about "Solar Energy" or photovoltaics. Basically rooftop "Solar Panels". The power from the sun is free is the sales pitch --- which is true.But the pinch is this --- you need to invest about $20,000 to $30,000 in the installed solar panels to get the "free power".Your home needs about a 3 kiloWatt (kW) unit. For example, your microwave will use 1000 Watts , or 1 kW, when you are running it. This solar unit costs about $10,000 per kW to install. Roughly $25,000 or so.If your electric bill runs $100/ month, then it costs you about $1200/ yr, or $12000 per 10 years, or about $24,000 for 20 year to buy electric from the power coThese solar units only last about 20 years in theory.It doesn't work out economically, unless you are paying very high electric rates which nobody is paying right now. There is no "free lunch" here.

[Gulshan]

As some folks point out, it is not sunny all the time. So you'll need to store some of the solar energy you gerenate during those sunny days. There are two ways to do this. First, you can install battery banks in your basement. You'll need to buy a lot of batteries, so that if you get several days of overcast weather, you still have electricity. You get to be completely separate from the electric utility, but you need to purchase and maintain and periodically replace a whole bunch of batteries.Second, in some places, you can effectively "spin the meter backwards." While this doesn't actually store the electricity, the electric company will, in some places, credit you for any extra electricity that you produce, allowing you to use it at night and during cloudy days. You'll not need to mess with the batteries, but you'll still be connected to the utility. For more info on this, you should do a search on "net metering."Unless you are very very committed to being off-grid, it is challenging (and expensive) to completely severe yourself from the electric company.

[Javier]

not completely irarnevelt, but it can depend on the proposition you had made with the electric company. If you pay the money upfront, you will have the opportunity to sell back surplus electric but only that of which you dont need. If you decide to take out a settlement plan and pay partial to none for the solar panels, you must hand your surplus to the company for free for (10 years?). After the 10 years, you'll be eligible to profit from your own electricity.US currency-wise, a friend of mine has spent under 100 dollars a month on their electric bill when using panels, opposed to a $400-$500 bill, on average. thats a $400 average deduction per month, which would certainly pay for itself over time. Do the math: $400 x 12 = an averaged $4,800 a year in savings!

[Alvin]

Whether you get paid for the electricity dnpeeds on your power company. This varies not only by country, but by state and city.To have even the possibility of getting paid, the panels must be connected to the grid through grid-tied inverters.In the US, the policies are generally such that it's not worth it to sell electricity to the electric company for the sake of actually getting a check, but it may be worth displacing your own electrical usage and avoiding part or most of your bill.

[Kazu]

We in the electric car asaioistcons have wondered that for over 30 years. Ed Begley Jr. is one who long ago had converted to solar cell technology and is independent of the big utility companies. If all the house owners converted it would be a sad day for electric companies.Spartawo

[Max]

Yes. Assume that you have a 10,000 BTU window air coiiotdnner that draws 1200 watts at 110 volt, you will need about 1500 watts of solar panels, a large 12-volt deep cycle battery and an inverter. The battery would not store enough to run the AC when the sun is down, it would just provide some stability. Figure $ 3500+ for the panels, about $ 200 for a charge controller, $ 300 for an inverter and $ 200 for a large deep cycle battery. Throw in a few hundred for cables and connectors. You can buy the panels on e-bay. Look out, there are lots of scams and overpriced panels out there. Many community colleges have solar classes, ours does, but they may focus on large arrays selling power back to the power company.

[Izzam]

Take a by cycle wheel without tyre. Fix six nbreums plastic funnel on its outer that are used in petrol bungs. If you keep it on your house top horizontally it will rotate by wind.You can just fix a toy D.C motors usually available in any battery operated toys.Connect it suitable to rotate the shaft of that tiny motor. You can connect a L.E.D bulb.That will glow.Instead of cycle wheel you can connect it in plastic fan and show it under tap water .That will also rotate and produce energy to light up a L.E.D.

[James]

It is possible. The proeblm you will ahve is when the sun sets- if it is still hot and humid- no sun=no power.If you wanted the AC to run 24 hours a day, get yourself 10KW of panels for a 1KW AC. Then add a 1500Watt truesine inverter, and start with 4 forklift batteries.You will need the excess power to charge the batteries for nightime operation. Plus you will have losses from the inverter and the charge control system. By compairison- the solar AC is the better deal if looking at just the up front costs.

[John]

again trying to help..again thnx 4 the preivous nothing else but A.NO COMMENTS ON THE OTHER OPTIONS .except these there is another drawback .its when your brother breaks the solar panel after quarrel with you then no electricity will b produced .hope this funny answer u liked ..its just to make yahhooooooooooo answer FUNNNNN

[Emilly]

Yes, Electric cars are better for the enrivonment than your conventional car. Why? The main reason is that when a conventional car burns fuel, It is much dirtier than when an electric car is running. As a matter of fact, Electric cars are considered 97% cleaner. However, this power that is charging the car has to come from somewhere, right? Correct. Power plants are still creating the power somewhere else. However, these plants create power on a much larger scale and are relatively much cleaner than your typical combustion engine in a normal car. Obviously, this means that a direct effect of the electric car is that it leads to cleaner air, a stronger ozone layer, and a healthier enrivonment for humanity.