This assigment is due by 8 pm, Friday April 17

Your submission should be in the form a single document - (word or PDF) and not multiple documents. Do NOT submit an excel spreadsheet. If you use excel then import the relevant parts into a word document.

You may collaborate with 2 up to other students to do this assignment, just make sure all your names are included in the uploaded filename. Show all your work, always.

Part of 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, in units of KWH, did that consume?

   c) If you have 20 100 watt incandescent light bulbs in our parents house that are on for 15 hours a day and they pay 10 cents per KWH, what is the monthly cost of these lights?

   d) Research and find the energy density of gasoline (in units of KWH per kg); note you will find variable answers but all will agree to within 10%. Now research the energy density of a Li-Ion battery (again there will be variation). Approximately how many kgs of batteries would be needed to have the energy density equivalent of 10 gallons of gas?

   e) Let's return to your parents house - how many kg of coal would be required to power those lightbulbs for one year?

   f) in round numbers, 1 kg of coal produces about 2.5 kg of CO₂ pollution. How much annual pollution comes from the coal fired electricity needed to power your parent's light bulbs?
   
   

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) A typical solar farm harvests solar energy at a rate of 100 watts per square meter (this includes efficiency) for installed PV panels. Approximately how many square kilometers of installed PV panels is needed to generate 1TW of power?

   c) A typical wind turbine now installed on land has a nameplate capacity of 2.5 Megawatts - how many turbines would be required to produce 1 TW? If you can build and deploy wind turbines at the rate of 2500 per year - how many years would it take to build this 1TW wind farm.

   
   
   
3. In 2010, the US produced electrical power at the scale of 1.35 terrawatts (this is continuous power).
   
   
   a) 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).
   
   b)List a household applicance power rating that is roughly equivalent of what you found in part a (then issue one to every american to carry around with them all the time!)
   
   c) Assume the average electricity price is 9 cents per Kwh. What is the monthly baseline per capita electricity cost to a US citizen for this produced power.
   
   
4. 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 2010?

   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. What percentage of Oregon's nameplate capacity was suddenly "lost".

   d) Line 27 contains renewables. What is the percentage contribution of renewable to total electricity (line 21) in the year 2000 compared to 2010?
   
   

5. This data exercise makes use of This Database.
   
   An editorial in your student newspaper claims that US foreign policy has been oriented towards protecting US interests in the Middle East for the last 30 years because "almost all of our imported oil comes from the Middle East - everyone knows this".
   
   Using the database above:
   
   a) Average the decade of the 80's , 90's, 00's and 2011--2014 of Annual input (units of thousand barrels a day) for two groups of countries:
   
   
   Group A: Canada, Mexico and Venezuala
   Group B: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait
   
   
   and report those averages here.
   
   b) Using this This tool - plot the data you just got and make a screen shot of that and insert it into your answer document.
   
   c) How does the Group B to Group A ratio change as a function of decade? What is that ratio currently?

   d) Write a 150 word rebuttal letter to the Editor of your student newspaper