EIA’s New Interactive Maps: State Energy Portal

According to the the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), its state energy portal is “the most comprehensive, dynamic, and interactive view of the U.S. government’s national and state energy data and information currently available to the public.”

The profile/map for NC can be found here. By clicking on the “Layers/Legend” tab and selecting one of five available base maps, educators can customize maps and charts for classroom use. Maps can be created to show availability of energy sources, transmission lines, major power plants as well as renewable energy potential for North Carolina.  Electricity, nuclear, natural gas and renewable energy profiles for the state are also available along with supporting data tables in Microsoft Excel. Also, by clicking on a specific power plant, the portal links users directly to that plant’s data in EIA’s electricity data browser (see corresponding blog post).

This tool also shows how NC ranks in comparison to the other 49 states in terms of energy production, consumption, prices for electricity and natural gas, and carbon dioxide emissions.

Thermoelectric-power plants: water withdrawal versus consumption

Conventional Power Plants: Water withdrawal versus consumption

According the US Geological Survey (USGS), production of electrical power results in one of the largest uses of water in the United States and worldwide. In 2005, about 201,000 million gallons of water each day were used to produce electricity (excluding hydroelectric power) and surface water accounted for more than 99 percent of total thermoelectric-power withdrawals. While some of the water withdrawn provides water to drive the steam turbines and generate electricity, much of the water is used for cooling the power-producing equipment.

When evaluating water use by thermoelectric-power plants, a distinction needs to be made between that of water withdrawal and water consumption.  Water withdrawal entails the removal of water from a local water source; the withdrawn water may or may not get returned to its source or made available for use elsewhere. Water consumption refers to the use of water in such a way as to prohibit it being returned to its source, usually because it is lost to evaporation. While water withdrawal by conventional power plants can be high, consumption can be low if the withdrawn water is returned to lakes and streams.  In 2005, withdrawal of water by thermoelectric power plants for cooling represented 44% of water withdrawn nationally, and 6% of water consumed (Congressional Research Service, 2010).

Droughts and hot summers can influence water withdrawals by power plants as they adjust to low water supply levels and/or use warmer water for their cooling operations; a graphic from the Union of Concerned scientists (UCS) illustrating these scenarios is available.  And for power plants that return water to its source, the returned water, now warmer, can impact the aquatic ecosystem in which it is discharged, which is referred to as thermal pollution. Another graphic from the UCS indicates regions around the country that have encountered power production/water supply issues associated with hotter and drier summers.

To learn more about cooling water, cooling water systems at power plants and thermal pollution, the following resources may be helpful:

Thermoelectric Power Water Use, USGS.  This website includes graphics and a schematic of a coal-fired power plant that relies on a closed-loop cooling system.

Thermal pollution, Encyclopedia of Earth.  This website includes satellite image illustrating thermal pollution in association with a power plant.

Cooling water for energy generation and its impact on national-level water statistics, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011 (pdf). This document includes graphics depicting once-through and closed-loop cooling systems, comparison of withdrawal and consumption for each type of system.

Energy’s Water Demand: Trends, Vulnerabilities, and Management, Congressional Research Service, 2010 (pdf).

Energy-water collision, Union of Concerned Scientists. This website includes graphics and links to supporting scientific publications.

How Much Water Does It Take to Make Electricity?

The Union of Concerned Scientists describes the various roles of water in the process of producing electricity from fuel extraction, production, refining, processing, and transport to electricity generation and emissions control at the power plant.  When comparing energy sources, one thing to keep in mind is the amount of water required for the entire life cycle of each energy source.

For example, I recently learned that natural gas requires the least amount of water to produce electricity when you consider the amount of water needed to produce 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.  This 2008 article from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, How much Water does it take to make electricity, summarizes research that took place at the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, to quantify the amount of water consumed during the production of a dozen types of fuel. To learn more, visit the original publication here.

Waterfootprint.org has also calculated the water footprint for various renewable and on-renewable energy sources, concluding that “the water footprint of energy from biomass is 70 to 400 times larger than the water footprint of the other primary energy carriers (excluding hydropower).”

 

ChokePoint US: Energy Used in the Water Cycle

I recently learned about a project from Circle of Blue called ChokePoint: US, a four-month reporting project where journalists set out to better understand what is occurring in the places where rising energy demand collides with diminishing supplies of fresh water.  Check out the website for featured stories, multimedia and infographics about hydropower, coal, oil, tar sands, fracking, and renewables.

Check out the interactive infographic titled: Energy Used in the Water Cycle that details the amount of electricity that is needed to transport, distribute and treat the water we use in our homes and businesses as well as the industrial and agricultural sectors.  While electricity plays a role in many steps of this water cycle, most electricity use occurs with the end users – customers who heat water to bathe, cook, etc.

For those of you who take your students on tours of water treatment plants or waste water treatment plants, consider asking the plant operators to discuss the plant’s use of electricity to pump, move and treat water.

 

Electricity data browser from EIA

The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently posted an electricity data browser to show generation, consumption, fossil fuel receipts, stockpiles, retail sales, and electricity prices. The data appear on an interactive web page and are updated each month; annual, quarterly and monthly data are available from 2001-2011. All images and datasets are available for download.  Furthermore, data sets can be filtered by fuel type, geographic region or state, or energy sector, enabling you to customize data sets and graphs for your state or region.

I encourage you to check out this tool to get up to date US energy data and to create customized graphs for use in the classroom. For example, this tool can be used to quickly get data and corresponding graphs to answer a variety of questions such as:

How much of NC’s electricity generation comes from biomass? natural gas? coal?

How does NC’s consumption of biomass compare the US as a whole?

How has NC’s consumption of natural gas changed since 2001?

Which region of the US is generating the most electricity from natural gas?

Using Sanborne Maps to get a glimpse of energy history

I am learning about former manufactured gas plants (MGPs) and recently had the opportunity to view detailed maps of Raleigh, NC dating back to 1888!  Maps produced by the Sanborn® Map Company of Pelham, New York, provide detailed information on the layout and construction of public and private buildings as well as roads and railroads in cities and towns across the state. A digital collection of maps from the 1880s through 1922 covering more than 150 cities and towns across the state is available from the UNC library.

If you haven’t checked these maps to get a glimpse of history for your city or town, take a look!  In addition to seeing how a city or town grew over time, you and your students will enjoy looking at the location of manufactured gas and later power plants relative to railroad tracks, waterways, neighborhoods, etc.

Department of Energy hosts Energy All Star Talks

On January 19, 2013 as part of Inauguration Weekend, the Department of Energy hosted Energy All Stars featuring prominent energy leaders doing TED-style talks outlining what our energy future can and should look like, and steps that can be taken to achieve that vision.

Speakers included Secretary of Energy – Steven Chu, former governor of Michigan – Jennifer Granholm, Los Angeles Mayor – Antonio Villaraigosa, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance – Michael Liebreich, President and CEO of CPS Energy – Doyle Beneby, managing principal of the Analysis Group and former Assistant Secretary of Energy – Susan Tierney, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

These Energy Star presentations are available online as YouTube videos.

New interactive tool for exploring future U.S. energy-use scenarios

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy released an interactive online tool “to help researchers, educators, and students explore future U.S. energy-use scenarios.” The Buildings Industry Transportation Electricity Scenarios (BITES) Tool is a scenario-based tool for analyzing how changes in energy demand and supply by economic sector can impact carbon dioxide emissions.

This web-based tool can be used in the middle and high school classroom to enable students to manipulate inputs, such as energy sources used for electricity generation and transportation fuel use, and to compare outputs and impacts on carbon dioxide emissions and the U.S. energy mix to the year 2050. Output data are made available in graphic form giving your students exposure to interpreting graphs.

To get started, watch the 4 minute intro video on the BITES website and then view scenarios that have already been created or, after a quick registration process, you can start building your own scenario.  A good starting point would be to show your students either the 2010 or 2011 Annual Energy Outlook (U.S. Energy Information Administration) base case.  By not making any changes to the inputs for this base scenario, the outputs will reflect current projections for the “business as usual” scenario. From here students can create their own scenarios, making modifications to one or more economic sectors and then comparing outputs to those of the base case.

Educator resources, including a tutorial and an online learning module are going to be available soon.

The BITES team is very interested in feedback, suggestions and lesson plans developed using the BITES tool! Please consider providing feedback on ways to improve the website and interface as well as sharing the lessons you build around using the BITES Tool. Feedback can be sent to bites@nrel.gov.

 

New Earth at Night

You may have heard that NASA has created a cloud free and incredibly detailed 360-degree view of the Earth at night  by creating a composite of two months of imagery taken by the new Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) satellite.  This satellite can discern not just city lights but also light from industrial sites, fires, gas flares and boats at sea!

A two minute video showing the Earth at night provides a narrated tour of some highlights of the new imagery.

Visit the NASA website for the following resources:

• Read an Earth Observatory feature about the study of nighttime lights.
• Read a NASA press release about the new capability.
• Download hemisphere views and animations.
• Download the flat global map.
• Interactively browse the city lights map at full resolution.
• Download video of the Suomi NPP satellite.

Burn: An Energy Journal

BURN: An Energy Journal is the flagship program of The Public Radio Energy Project and winner of the 2012 American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) Kavli Science Journalism Award for their documentary special titled Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima (54 minutes in 3 segments) that examines the future of nuclear power one year after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan..

Two other documentaries are available, The Hunt for Oil: Risks  and Rewards and The Power of One a two hour special that includes segments on fracking in Pennsylvania, drilling for oil in the Arctic and the quest to build better batteries.