Discover Magazine had a great feature in the June 2010 issue where they highlighted energy trends…and here are some of them. Residential and commercial energy consumption amounts to 72% of all electricity and 13% of all fossil fuel used in the US. It is estimated that by using more natural light for buildings electricity for lighting usage could be reduced 30-60%. Natural ventilation could help reduce AC usage 20-40% and using natural shading could decrease AC usage another 10%. Lastly, more stringent energy regulations and policies could save another 50-75%.
Currently our energy usage is broken down as follows:
Petroleum- 37%
Natural gas- 24%
Coal- 22%
Nuclear power- 8%
Biomass- 4%
Hydro energy- 2%
Geothermal, Solar, and wind- 1%
Amazingly 57% of all energy is lost during generation, transmission, and use.
The significant amount of lost electricity highlights why we need to implement more smart grid based systems. Transportation is one area with significant energy waste. For example light-duty vehicle consume 3.4% of all energy used in the US. However, these vehicles only convert around 20% of the fuel they consume into useful energy.
The article went on to highlight the potential for biofuel and fuel cell systems. However, one of the most striking facts was that while we graduate around 1,000 college graduates exit each year with training in electrical-power engineering, we will need more than 7,000 such trained professionals in the next five years. Thus, we are not as a country producing enough trained professionals to help lead us to energy efficiency.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The college graduates are pursing other fields with higher salaries. When the demand drives up the salaries field will have no shortage of students entering into the electrical-power engineering field.
ReplyDelete