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World Energy Issues

Why is Electrical Energy Expensive?

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Article by a site contributor called David, thanks, David!

To generate large quantities of electricity usually electrical generators are used and these need to be driven mechanically to turn them.  The drive to turn them can be reasonably direct for example in the form of water and air turbines or indirect via a heat engine with the heat being produced for example by gas, oil, coal or nuclear energy.

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Oil From Crops

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Apparently it should be possible in the best case to produce 20,000 barrels of oil from crops per year on a square kilometer of land.  Taking an extremely unlikely scenario to illustarte what this means, the numbers in the table show what would be required of the land in 2010 and in 2035 assuming that all oil is produced from the land.   Many of the numbers used have come from the CIA website, an excellent source of data, an example of which is shown below.  The key number is the use of oil each day, the number is 80,000,000 bbl per day (barrels per day) today and this is likely to double by 2035.

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Energy Consumption World Wide

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For this site a simple contextualization of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission is a very useful as an indicator of what can be achieved in various future power generation and energy saving scenarios.  It is the aim of this article to as simply as possible convey the key statistics related to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

It is almost certainly the case that we are having an effect on our planet with CO2 emission but is also clear that natural fluctuations do occur which confuse the picture, The graph below shows this fluctuation over the past 2000 years in the North Atlantic and shows the so called “the medieval warm period” in this region.  Temperatures are higher now and more importantly are globally higher; it is also the case that the rate of increase is greater. This is a reasonably strong indicator that we are at the very least contributing to temperature change and we should not sit on our hands and assume all will be well if we do nothing. Pragmatically another reason for addressing reliance on fossil fuels is that they will run out.

 

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Household Energy Costs

Site Guidance

All calculations on this site are based on current fuel prices they are checked regularly are automatically updated and were last changed on:-
19th February 2013
For complete clarity, all calculation using current fuel prices are coloured red.
The costs calculated based on these fuel prices should be regarded as 'good estimates', given that fuel prices vary in different parts of the county and at different time of the year.
The calculations also have different levels of accuracy depending on the nature of the calculation. For example calculating the energy use of a known power output TV is very easy compared to calculating the effect on energy savings when insulating a cavity wall.

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Icons are also used throughout the site to indicate the level of saving or the relative cost implications associated with an choice you might make, or a tip you read or related to how your house is currently configured. These icons below.
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The main units used in this site are in the table below, For a complete explanation of any of these Wikipedia is an excellent resource.

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kW Kilowatt 1000 watts
kWh Kilowatt hour Measure of Energy
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Best Investment table

Measures to reduce fuel bills ROI*
Lagging 1
Loft Insulation 1.9
Cavity Wall Insulation 2.2
Underfloor Insulation 4.2
Solid Wall Insulation 15.1
Solar Hot Water 34
Double Glazing 55.6

*ROI is the time it takes in years to return the investment in fuel savings for an average gas heated 3 bed semi-detached house. The table assumes no government incentive schemes are used.

Renewable Energy Measures ROI**
Heat Pumps
- Replacing Electric		 4 to 8
Heat Pumps
- Replacing LPG		 15 to 30
Wind Power 14 to 55
Solar Photovoltaics 24 to 64

**ROI is the time it takes in years to return the investment in electricity savings. The table assumes no government incentive schemes are used.

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