The power budget

[snousle]

I am repeatedly surprised by energy statistics. I've spent lots of time calculating the costs of various things in my immediate environment, so I was astonished to read that the US as a whole uses about three terawatts of power on average. That's ten kilowatts per person! The average American uses about 1.4 of those kilowatts in gasoline. So automobiles - which are profligate energy consumers - are still only a fraction of the total power budget.

The human body uses only about 100 watts, and if you really exert yourself it is possible to generate about a kilowatt for short periods. A horsepower is also of the same scale, with one horsepower being about three-quarters of a kilowatt. Our house, with three people, uses about a kilowatt of electricity. It boggles the mind to consider that the machinery around us, whose work we appropriate to ourselves, is like an invisible slave galley with the power of a hundred men working twenty-four hours a day on our behalf. Or, less dramatically, a hundred very bright incandescent bulbs in some gigantic vanity mirror.

I hear a lot of that power, about half, is used for "buildings", which is a pretty broad category, and I'm not sure how it breaks down into heating, cooling, lights, and so forth. But for the life of me, I can't figure out where even the remaining half is going.

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

There are a variety of sources. The three-terawatt number is from a recent article in Nature, but not recent enough that I have the issue at hand.

I believe that this is energy used in the US so Chinese consumption is not counted. And it's marketed energy, so no, solar use by crops is not included.