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Where Do You Get Electricity?

By Chuck | Permalink | No Comments | March 27th, 2008 | Trackback

Electricity is something we rely on every day, but where do we get the energy to produce that electricity? I decided to look into the matter. My search for a reliable source of information led me to the Energy Information Administration, the government source for “official energy statistics”. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until October of 2008 to get the statistics for 2007. The information I looked at was through 2006. How accurate is this information? I believe it to be accurate - this stuff is tracked very closely by many different public and private groups. I work for a private engineering firm that (among other things) is heavily involved in the construction of wind turbines, the power and mining industries, and environmental work for oil refineries and other large companies. We work directly with various government organizations, along with other clients who have to report to various government organizations. To the best of my knowledge, the data the EIA presents is reliable. Feel free to check the website yourself. Here is a summary of what I researched.

The total U.S. production of electricity is 4,064,702 million kilowatt hours (KwH). Yes, that is over 4 trillion KwH. A KwH is a measure of electricity use. Basically, it is 1,000 watts of power used in one hour. One 60 watt light bulb burning for 16 hours and 40 minutes would use 1 KwH (the average U.S. cost for electricity for 2006 was 10.4 cents/KwH). The total U.S. consumption of electricity is about 3.8 trillion KwH. Where do the other 200 billion KwHs go? Well, I’m not sure entirely. Some of it is exported to Canada and Mexico and a big chunk of it is just lost to some basic laws of physics.

The electricity comes from various sources of energy. Here is a list of them and the percentages each source contributes to the total:

Coal 49%
Natural Gas 20%
Nuclear 19.4%
Hydroelectric 7%
Oil Petroleum 1.6%
Other 3 % (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, etc…)

I was asked the other day what percentage wind power contributes to the total. Well, stay tuned and you will find out.

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