Not So Fun Facts
▪ Fossil fuel usage is equivalent to 22 billion slaves.
▪ Farm machinery often runs on 40 horsepower motors. A skilled horseman or farmer a century ago could hand 2 horses. (1 horsepower = 3/4 kilowatt)
▪ Our industrial food complex inputs 10 calories in for 1 calorie out. Fossil fuel inputs include fertilizers, pesticides, running farm machinery, transportation. (Go organic and local).
Electricity Consumption
▪ World consumpes 20 million gigiwatthours per year
▪ America consumes 4 million gigiwatthours per year (20% power, 4% population)
▪ 1 gigiwatt = 1billion kilowatt
▪ Average U.S. residential home uses 25 - 30 kilowatt-hours per day (and this does not factor electricity in getting water pumped to houses)
▪ I can easily get by on the 3-4 kilowatt-hours per day that my 1 kilowatt system generates.
▪ A 100 watt lightbulb consumes 100watthours of electricity each hour it is on
ENERGY & ELECTRICITY
Energy represents heating and transportation sectors as well as the magical current of electrons flowing through our walls (electricity).
Coal accounts for 1/2 of our electricity while it is only about 1/4 of our total energy budget.
Petroleum is 37% of entire energy budget and a mere 2% of electricity budget. There are few major power plants (Hawaii) burning petroleum, mostly home scale gasoline fueled generators. In this context, a few LED or CFC bulbs burning isn't nearly as significant as driving to the store to get some eggs.(either from an ecological or economic perspective.) The toxic wastestream and CO2 emissions of burning gasoline is more significant than even coal fired power plants.
Natural gas is a great energy source to use for heating. We burn 3x the natural gasi in large power plants when we turn it into electricity to run electric stoves rather than gas stoves. Burning natural gas in a power plant to heat water to create steam to turn turbines to create electricity to send hundreds of miles over copper wires transformed to 1000’s of volts then amped down to 240 volts to feed your home to electrically heat a resistor that again is not 100% efficient in order to boil water seems silly compared to burning the gas right there to boil the water.
Electricity Production
A 1 kilowatt solar system generates 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity each hour it receives a full noonsun of power. There are losses in electricity generation; my 1 kilowatt solar system (receives about 5.5 noon suns) yielding 5.5 kilowatt-hours /day produced yielding around 3 - 4 kilowatts-hours of usable electricity every day.
See Formulas.