Using less energy, more renewables

Wow, excellent infometrics skills whoever put that together. I just love well designed charts. Maybe I just don't like to read....

 

this is great news and very surprising coming out of the bush era.

 

That's good news and I believe there has been a reduction. I would like to see the results after they are adjusted for reduced consumption because the economy is in the dumper.

 

good point.

 

What's surprising is the light grey - energy loss. Most of the energy we produce is not being used, and is instead lost primarily as heat (particularly in transportation and electrical production). We should be able to recapture some of this with stirling engines and geothermal technology, and then have more energy to use without using more resources.

 

In texas where air conditioning puts a heavy drain on the grid, geothermal saves about 75% of the energy for heating and ac. With the current incentives many new homes are being built with natural cooling, xeroscaping to save water, and geothermal. I would think there would be similar savings in cold weather areas.

There are a large number of steam or single cycle turbine generating plants. With more steady demand from ev charging these can be changed to combined cycle gas which boosts efficiency to 60% and beyond. All this costs is capital investment. Stirling engines are relatively expensive. Coal gasification can allow for combined cycle and high efficiencies as well. The other benefit of combined cycle plants is the CO2 emissions stream is already separated so it is easier and cheaper to add sequestration.

 

I can't figure out those team brackets at all.

So the good news is our energy consumption is going down? But this might be tied to the bad news that it is partially going down because our economy is in the crapper?

So we are becoming more efficient...but more efficient because more people can't afford to be wasteful?

Before I get too excited I'll have to give this some more thought.

 

but the economy can't explain the increases in alternative sources, that has to be goon news!

 

What is being used for geothermal cooling in your area? Is it using coolant loops into the ground for AC condensers or something more exotic? Good stuff in either case.

There are two power plants within 6 miles of here that use wood waste for power generation. One is in a lumber mill that then uses the waste heat from the wood waste fired electric power plant to provide heat for the lumber drying kilns. The other is a miles from any potential use for it's waste heat, so it just gets wasted like most low order industrial waste heat.

Waste heat from industrial and other processes is usually low enough grade that the only practical thing to do with it is use it as heat.

 

Its not very exotic, think about making your home as easy to heat and cool as a cave. When you dig a hole deep enough the temperature is 67degrees in texas all year round. A heat exchanger using fluid uses this temperature to heat or cool the building. Good thermal insulation on the home allow the system to be smaller. Most of the public schools in town have geothermal, and use inexpensive water heat exchangers. Electricity is used for the pump and ventilation system. If you want to heat above 65 degrees another electrical or fossil fuel furnace is needed. Different areas have different ground temperature or more difficulty building. The economics also favor geothermal in areas with larger differences between the ground and surface temperature.

 

I would go so far as to say it's good news.

I agree, but would still like a better understanding of which is which.

 

I like low tech like that that works. Even lower tech, years ago I read about someone building houses in the Southern California desert area that built reinforced adobe houses with a high level of foam insulation on the outside of the building that went down into the ground 3 or 4 feet below the floor. That resulted in the inside of the house effectively being thermally coupled to the ground temperature 4 feet under gound. No power required.

 

I can at least partially explain the greening of the texas grid. In the late 90s, the goon, I mean bush and the state legislature, heard rumblings about people wanting wind power. They did a survey and the people overwhelmingly preferred to pay a little more for wind then gas or coal. Incentives were put in place, the market loved the idea, and texas hit its wind goal for 2010 in 2005, and has kept on building. One power company, TXU, wanted to build more coal plants and regulators could not find the power to stop them. Environmentalists and finance people got together and the company was taken over, the plan for 11 new coal plants was scrapped. The investment and recovery act of 2007 and further federal moneys are paying for a modernization of the texas grid. This will allow more wind to be brought online. The texas grid heavily uses natural gas which can be switched on and off, this allows wind fluctuations to be moderated much easier than states that are mainly coal based.