This assigment is due by 8 pm, Friday Jan 20

You may collaborate with 1 other student to do this assignment, just make sure both your names are included in the uploaded filename. Show all your work, always.

This assignment is to help you familiarize yourself with various units and capacities that are part of energy literacy.

http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm

is a very useful tool

1. In this class, energy will generally be given in units of Kilowatt Hours (KWHs) and power will be in units of MegaWatts (MW). Using the online energy converter linked above, do the following conversions:

   a) What is the KWH energy equivalant of a US gallon of gas?

   b) If you drive your 300 horsepower vehicle for two hours, how much energy did that consume?

   c) What is the energy equivalent of 2000 nutrional calories?

   d) What is the energy equivalent of 1 tonne of coal?

   e) If you use 30 kwhs a day of electrical energy (typical for a college student), how many days could one ton of coal power you for?

2. A terrawatt (TW) = 10¹² watts of power. The terrawatt scale is what is relevant to the US and the world.

   a) look up the nameplate capacity of Grand Coulee Dam. Approximately how many Grand Coulee dams = 1 TW

   b) find the typical nameplate capcity of a Nuclear Power plant. Approximately how many nuclear power plants would need to be built to reach 1 TW?

   c) A typical solar farm harvests solar energy at a rate of 500 watts per square meter of PV panels. Approximately how many sqaure kilometers of PV panels would be needed to generate 1TW of power?

   d) A typical wind turbine now installed on land has a nameplate capacity of 3 Megawatts - how many turbines would be required to produce 1 TW?

3. In 2010, the US produced electrical power at the scale of 1.35 terrawatts. Calculate the per capita electrical power in the US (this is equivalent to the amount of generated power required per individual at any given time) in units of kilowatts (KW).

4. Energy = power x time; Power is measured in units of watts (kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts, terrawatts) and is instananeous. Power used over time is energy. Based on your calculation in question 3, and assuming an average energy cost of 9 cents per KWH, what is the monthly baseline per capita electricity cost to a US citizen for this produced power.

5. The State of Oregon's Electricity Profile:

   Access the Excel Spreadsheet for Oregon All values in this table are in units of Megawatts (MW)

   a) Line 21 represents the total nameplate power capacity for Oregon. What percentage growth in total electrical power requirements has occured for Oregon from 1990 to 2009?

   b) If that growth rate is sustained for the next 20 years, what will Oregon's power requirements be in the year 2030?

   c) Observe line 25 and find out what happened and briefly report on that

   d) Line 27 contains renewables. What is the percentage contribution of renewable to total electricity (line 21) in the year 2000 compared to 2009.?