The Big Picture

(cf. Right Now, e.g. CA ISO)

(-html; Petroleum-html; Natural Gas-html; Coal-html; Electricity-html -- check out those conversion losses! -- kWh/country)

U.S. Energy Information Administration

The EIA is the standard source of aggregate energy consumption information for the United States. In addition to basic pie charts (parent) and awesome diagrams, they have good historical information and lots of interesting details (2005 update?). The EIA is mostly focussed on totals and averages, but these totals put everything into perspective and the averages help us gauge the utility of our projects.

State Energy Profiles

should help us figure out how much energy costs in various places and perhaps whether many states have scaled pricing, etc. This fuel mix map highlights the differences generation in different states, from CA's 1% coal (10%+ non-hydro "other") to OR and WA's 70%+ hrdro -- HOWEVER, do not confuse (as I did for a while) generation with consumption; the highly populous west coast states buy lots(?) of coal-fired electricity from their mountain-state neighbors. Need to analyze how much each state generates vs. how much it consumes to get an idea of where it comes from. Some utilities offer a breakdown of their sources, but I'm not sure there is good per-state data on how the power consumed there is generated. For personal purposes, knowing the fuel mix for your utility is often enough.

Misc EIA

• new generating capacity by MW and planned year
• The Effect of Income on Appliances in U.S. Households
• Energy Kid's Page – Energy Facts (who is Energy Kid?)
• Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Energy Consumption by Sector, 1980-2004

On household appliances

• Appliances in U.S. Households (selected years)
• suggests they do household surveys every four years
• 2001: 57% of households have electric dryers; ~17% have gas (how are multi-family shared dryers counted?)
• since 1997: 99% of households have had a color TV; since 1990: 99% some sort of TV; 1980: 98% some sort
• meanwhile, we're up to 17% with two fridges or more (14% in 1980)
• 2001 summary of electricity use by appliance per household:
• "No single appliance dominated the use of electricity. Refrigerators consumed the most electricity (14 percent of total electricity use for all purposes), followed by lighting (9 percent), clothes dryers (6 percent), freezers (3 percent), and color TV’s (3 percent); [...]"
• "The largest use of electricity in the average U.S. household was for appliances (including refrigerators and lights), which consume approximately two thirds of all the electricity used in the residential sector (Figure 1, Table 2);
• "Air-conditioning accounted for an estimated 16 percent, space heating 10 percent, and water heating 9 percent;
• The U.S. uses 66 billion kWh per year to dry clothes (Xinh)

Annual Energy Review 2005 (19 MB)

The annual energy review is exciting to me (Soren) because I read a book from the library based on said information ... written in the 90's, it talked about cheap oil from the recession causing no one to be interested in better/cleaner technologies. Things have changed a bit, though the kids plastics site says it was only recently (2005 Hurricane season) that "virgin resin" became more expensive than recycled plastic. I have also been trying to understand better why so much energy (66-75%) is lost when generating electricity. That book (and many web sites since have) alluded to the issue due to "laws of thermodynamics" and I am curious. "co-generation" seems to be the art of making use of the excess heat.

The Rocky Mountain Institute

RMI is full of huge-picture plans. One of their co-founders spoke on NPR and was one of the first Data Points links. They are focussed on making better use of resources and on encouraging businesses to take advantage of "natural capitalism." Doomsday types (like some of the posters at theoildrum.com) don't believe the efficiency gains can continue as far as RMI thinks they will. RMI's founder, Amory Lovins is linked to green.yahoo under "ENVIRONMENT VS. ECONOMY: do we have to make a choice." :)

• http://www.energyfinder.org/ finds money that's leaving your community due to excess energy consumption
• http://www.esource.com/ is a source of Energy Business Intelligence
• Winning the Oil Endgame: "it will cost less to displace all of the oil that the United States now uses than it will cost to buy that oil." (@ $12/barrel, no less)

Big-picture issues

• Water vs. Power Generation (CSM) hints at what's happening to that that excess heat energy: it's going up in steam (and/or dirty water).

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