Posted on 06/07/2018 3:44:04 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A great deal of the electricity in the United States goes to waste.
Much is lost in the initial generation of electricity. And much is lost through the use of inefficient devices, like incandescent light bulbs that heat up a filament to produce light.
But power is also lost in between, on the grid, as it is carried along hundreds of miles of wires, repeatedly shifted between different voltages, and converted from AC to DC and back, all in the split second between the time it enters the grid and the time it powers your computer.
How much power is lost on the grid?
The consensus among experts in the field is that most electricity is lost on the two ends, in generation and use, and not that much in between. The Department of Energy estimates that, of 37.7 quads (quadrillion BTUs) of “energy consumed to generate electricity,” 23.24 quads (about 62 percent) is wasted as “conversion losses.” After that, only 0.84 quads (roughly 2.2 percent) is lost or “unaccounted for” in transmission and distribution (T&D)....
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
Nope. Cancel above post. That was 3dfx. Not 3dfs.
CA...and D.C. (gotta test it on BOTH coasts, ya’know?!)
Energy lost in transmission and distribution: About 6% – 2% in transmission and 4% in distribution – or 69 trillion Btus in the U.S. in 2013
Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
I wonder how they are going to compete with another startup called Sense in Cambridge. The devices are on sale now and with a box attached to your tap, it can identify the devices inside. Sounds like a good “last mile” for these grid network guys. Ahhhh, the quest for American Monopoly is born again!
Bingo. The farther the generator is from the user the more lost in transmission. The NIMBY and physical limitations drive the location of power generation.
“Incandescent bulbs are pretty much 100% efficient in the wintertime.”
that is a point I have made several times. You are first one here to acknowledge it. All the reports on Incandescent waist pretend that this fact does not even exist. And I am not saying that energy efficient bulbs don’t have their good points. But also when it comes to end of life Incandescent bulbs are by far the most environmentally friendly.
Solar rules
There’s no denying it now
Electricity and hot water
You can produce 100% of your gigajoules
The “Smart Grid” is the newest version of the Perpetual Motion Machine myth
CHEMICAL NOT ELECTRICAL
Okay, I waited for responses, and now a BSEE here will chime in. Here is the answer.
Using the article’s numbers, only 2% loss occurs in transmission of electricity. That high efficiency also compares to hydroelectric power generation of greater than 90% and if I recall, up to 98%.
These demonstrate that electricity and magnetism are incredibly very efficient, losing only about 2%. That leaves no room for improvement.
Hydroelectric converts the weight of water, into force, through mechanical conversion, through magnetism, and finally to electricity. It is a reverse motor, also called a generator. The heat loss is minimal comparatively.
The large loss in other types of power generation is a chemical process, generally heat loss. Thermodynamics is very clear about inefficiencies in chemical processes like burning or compressing and expanding gases.
Mother nature does not allow 98% high efficiencies in chemical conversions like electrical or magnetism. Take up the issue of heat loss and entropy with mom. She is a most unforgiving bitch.
Solutions like converting waste heat loss back into useful work is a diminishing return. Entropy is God’s devil, so no answer there. Finally, a more direct atomic conversion of chemical atoms into electrons, like a fuel cell, are far in the future, and may not even be possible.
So suck it up. Large inefficiency is here. It is like recycling, which is only performed by the naive or coerced. The solution then is increase the supply to overcome the loss and cover future demand.
There ain’t no free lunch, said the Engineer.
Ohm, that is interesting.
Is the HVDC you’re talking about the Pacific DC Intertie? Learned about this DC transmission system in the 80’s.
It reminds me of the discussions that I have had over the past several decades with people who still insist that the “Pogue carburetor” makes it possible for an ordinary pickup truck to get 200 mpg at highway speeds. And that the oil companies prevented the mythical carburetor from being marketed. These types of rumors started approximately 90 years ago and even Charles Nelson Pogue who patented numerous devices to increase fuel efficiency in the 1920s and 1930s denied that they had any basis in reality. But the myth lives on to this day.
Fast talking hucksters and people who are capable of writing convincing sounding documents are able to convince a substantial segment of the population that just about anything that they make up is true. One would think that with ever increasing information technology that there would be a smaller percentage of the population that is vulnerable to this type of nonsense. Current “green energy” and “global warming” controversies have taught us that people young and old are actually more vulnerable to malcontents spreading nonsense than ever before. This has allowed uninformed idiots like Al Gore and Bill Nye “the science guy” to become very effective nonsense spreading media darlings.
This is disturbing. It shows that as smart or advanced as some believe that our society has become, our innate intelligence has not increased since our Republic was founded. There seems to be substantial evidence that the movie Idiocracy is closer to the mark than many would admit.
“Is the HVDC you’re talking about the Pacific DC Intertie? Learned about this DC transmission system in the 80’s.”
don’t know the specifics, just repeating info from a wiki article about the U.S. grid ... HVDC interconnects are big in the EU and Canada, where apparently various multiple grids are impossible to otherwise synchronize when connected ...
I apologize for completely going off on a tangent on this, but I have understood the efficiency of electrical mechanical devices since an early age. Most people will want to skip the rest of this post, but if anyone is interested... here is why.
As a child I was fascinated by human powered energy production. Not as a means of providing the world with useful power but to understand intrinsically the amount of muscle power needed to power various devices. Over the years I have had a large collection of hand and leg cranked generators and wind up devices.
As a childhood project I connected an old car generator to a stationary bicycle. There were inefficiencies in the system I designed but unlike an alternator the generator was self exciting and needed no battery so the load placed on the system was directly transmitted to the pedals of the stationary bicycle. I used the generator with both a voltage regulator and without a voltage regulator.
Unregulated my system put out about 50 volts when the bicycle cranks were rotated at approximately 100 rpms. The 50 volt output was more than enough to power handheld electric drills and other tools powered by AC/DC brushed motors like blenders, mixers, grinders etc... It was very interesting to me at the time that placing a load on the drill could be felt positively and immediately by whoever was pedaling the bicycle. It felt like a direct mechanical connection and to me at the time this was an indicator of the efficiency of electro-mechanical devices.
I performed many other “experiments” using the generator with and without a voltage regulator. If the system was used with a voltage regulator it could be pedaled at a slow speed and still maintain 12 volts. If a load consisting of 12 volt electric light bulbs were connected in parallel... One 60 watt bulb was fairly easy to keep lit, two 60 watt bulbs required significant effort for most people, and three 60 watt bulbs was more than most people could keep lit for any significant amount of time.
The interesting thing about the bulbs connected in parallel with the voltage was regulated that it was easy for the peddler to find what RPM was most comfortable to maintain their most efficient output at a certain energy production level. This was faster pedaling than most people realized it would be especially at higher loads.
I actually was a state champion and nationally ranked bicycle road racer in the late 1970s. The lesson learned about the efficiencies of pedaling at a higher cadence was something that helped me especially when planning gear ratios for hilly routes. Most other racers tried to climb hills at that time with as high a gear as they could handle, but I always felt that this was inefficient because of my experiments with a load with a regulated 12v output.
So sorry for the long explanation and going off on a tangent.
I am sorry these were 100 watt light bulbs.
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