2010 snap shot portfolio
What do you see?
Watts:
Total US NET electricty consumption in the year 2010 was approximately 3873 Terrawatt Hours (TWH).
There are 365 x 24 = 8760 hours per year.
Now this is consumption, that is END USE. Production is obviously higher than consumption has power is dissipated as heat (depending on the source of electricity generation) and lost in transmission and distribution.
Now we are interested here in determining our Electrical Nameplate Power capacity. Nameplate means the total power that can be produced by a device. Nameplate capacity represents infrastructure investment which is a way to determing the evolution of your energy economy (see the table under Week 1)
Power = rate of energy usage = Energy/Time:
So the NET electrical power requirements for the US are:
3873 TWhours/8760 hours = 0.442 TW or 442,000 Megawatts of nameplate capacity.
However, integrated over all sources of power generation, we are about 44% efficient meaning that 442,000/.44 = 1,000,000 MW or 1TW in Round Numbers. of power was produced.
Round number factoid: 1 TW electrical power production in the US; 0.5 TW in end use. The world is about 4 TW of power and about 2TW of end use
Averaged over the entire United States, the typical power plant size for the generation of electricity is 300 MW (tho individually this ranges from 1 MW to 6000 MW)
Thus we have 1,000,000/300 = 3335 or approximately 3000 -3500 individual powerplants that need to be hooked to the national grid.
And this is just for electricity production. We are not talking yet about heat or tansportation.
Note, also, for reasons to be discussed later, we are now annually losing about 10% of power plant generated electricity in our aging grid system.
This loss is approximately 100,000 MW equivalent to 300 average power plants or 16 Grand Coulee dams.
Clearly as our demand for electricity grows, we require more and more power plant construction. It is most cost effective to build a few large scale plants, rather than many smaller ones, due to grid limitations.
The evidence for progess on the alternative energy front, at the moment, is ambiguous:
2010 snap shot portfolio
What do you see?