Types of Energy Sources Utilized for Homes
The quantity of the energy that we use in our daily lives depends on the types of devices that utilize the amount of energy as well as depending on the climate and the weather condition. The devices that we use at home have been increased rapidly. In United States, the use of Air conditioner has been increasing from the year of 1980 (Andersen, Mathews & Rask, 2009). The household plugs in numerous electronic and other appliances that have been comparatively increased than before. Before the usage of refrigerators and other equipment used for cooking has been in common. At the present scenario, usage of dishwasher, washing machine, dryers, and ovens has been used commonly with the use of televisions and computers. Moreover this technique tends to increase their mode of innovation that motivates the usage of the gaming system and other rechargeable electronic devices that becomes a part of integration for our modern lifestyle. This result in the increase in the energy usage and the top three primary types of energy that powers the home as well as all of the homes in a community are as follows:
Natural Gas:
This is commonly found deep under the earth, which is colorless, tasteless and odorless in nature. The main substance of the natural gas is methane that could be denoted as CH4. Natural gas also consists of hydrocarbon gas liquids and non-hydrocarbon gas. The natural gases could be used as a fuel. Coal-bed methane is said to be a natural gas substance that could be found in the coal. U.S. and other few countries produce the natural gas from the shale and various types of rocks that consists of natural gases within the pores of the rock (Branker, Pathak & Pearce, 2011). This formation of rocks gets fractured by the water forces or either chemical down a well and releases the natural gases.
The amount of natural gas utilized by the U.S. was found to be 27.49 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) by the year 2016. This account 29% of usage is done by the natural gases. The total consumption done by various sectors with the natural gas in the year 2016 is listed as follows:
- Electric power—9.987 Tcf—36%
- Industrial—9.31 Tcf—34%
- Residential—4.35 Tcf—16%
- Commercial—3.11 Tcf—11%
- Transportation—0.74 Tcf—3%
Natural gas has been ultimately used for the production of electricity but some commercial sectors use the resource for heating the building and for other purposes (Connolly, Lund, Finn, Mathiesen & Leahy, 2011). The utmost resource for the production of electricity is mainly done by natural gas. Over 27% of electricity has been produced mainly by burning natural gas in the United Stated in the year 2016.
Natural Gas
Commercial sectors and home use natural gases for heating up of water and building, to operate the cooling system and refrigerators, used for cooking and drying of clothes and lights up the building of the outdoors. Several consumers use natural gases as a fuel with the combination of heat and power systems. By the year 2017, the commercial sectors in United stated accounted for about 11% of consumption of natural gas and 18% of energy consumption was by the natural gases in the commercial buildings.
Nuclear energy:
Commercially nuclear power production has been in use from the year 1950. At present, there are about 99 nuclear reactors with 61 plants over 30 states of U.S (Heshmati 2014). Although some of the reactor core has been shut down, the power produced in the year of 2017 seems to be same as in the year of 2013. The commercially operating nuclear reactor of U.S is located at the east of Mississippi river. The largest reactor core that operates in the United States produces an electricity of about 1400 MW. Each nuclear power plant (above 32) has at least two nuclear reactors. The main source of the nuclear particle is Uranium. They utilize more capacity than other plants that have been shown in the figure given below.
Heating Oil:
Heating oil is greatly used for the heating purposes. Over 5.7 million households commercially utilize the heating oil to heat water. Mostly, they use heating oil for heating the space (Crawford, 2009). We could commonly see the commercial homes and institutional building that uses this heating oil for heating up water. Moreover, by the year 2017, residential consumers bought about 3.1 billion gallons of heating oil that were the highest record of the sale. Above 84% of North-east people was involved in this sale.
Environmental Impact:
Several impacts could be caused due to the non-renewable sources of energy that we commercially use, which are as follows:
- Over the past, tiny animals and sea plants died on the sea or land is found to be buried under the earth that decays for several years (Huo, Zhang & He, 2011). They were buried deeper and deeper which could be forced by the reaction of temperature and pressure that could change them into oil and gas. At present, we dig the layers of sand, silt, and rock for determining the natural gases.
- The cost of the heating oil price seems to be very large. Crude oil accounts for 55% average price of gallons during the winter and 29% per gallon accounts for the cost of refining the oil and the remaining percent fall under the category for the distribution, marketing and profits. This increases the rate of the heating oil. Households who use heating oil should buy them before winter and store it for the future purposes.
- Like the other natural gases and fossils, the nuclear reactor does not show any impact for the production of carbon dioxide. Moreover, the equipment that are used for the mining of the uranium seems to pollute since these equipment could be operated by the means of burning the fossil fuels that seems to associate with the electricity the nuclear plant produces.
A major threat to the environment occurs due to the emission from the radioactive waste from the uranium mill tailings, reactor fuel and the remaining nuclear waste. This could remain radioactive and can cause several threats. Hence the handling of these nuclear wastes is ultimately very important. Handling necessarily deals with the proper transportation, disposal and storage of nuclear materials (IEA 2012a). In the United States, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) handles the operation of Nuclear power plants.
Nuclear Energy
The waste from the nuclear plant is been classified under 2 categories namely: 1) low-level waste and high-level waste (Lund & Kempton, 2008). The radioactivity from these wastes could be in the range of low background level that could be in the uranium mill tailings to the higher background, which could be seen in the reactor fuels. The term radioactive decay means that the nuclear waste decreases with the increase in time. As the year passes, the radioactivity of the substance could reduce. Radioactive half-life means, the time requires for the radioactive substance to reduce half of its original level. In order to reduce the potential of the radiation, the nuclear waste should be properly stored at the temporary period (Christidis, Koch, Pottel & Tsatsaronis, 2012). Uranium mill tailing releases a radioactive element called radon which is in a gaseous state at the time of their decay. They are often placed near their processing facility, from the place they occur. They are enclosed properly with the seal bearings that could be in the form of clay so that this could avoid radiation from entering into the atmosphere. These barriers are covered by large rocks or other materials and buried deep into the soil that could prevent erosion. Low radiating waste could be the protective clothes, tools and other small disposal that could contain only a minimum amount of radiation. These are subjected to special regulations that could prevent them from contacting the atmosphere.
The United States promotes a greater impact in their safety and the risk of the contamination of water, land, and air is considered very low due to their diverse, superfluous barriers and their various safety requirements (Depuru, Wang & Devabhaktuni, 2011). The contamination due to the nuclear waste and burning of natural gases could raise an abundant pollution into the air and water. But the government fixes certain norms for running the power production plant. They enhance their local quality of air and water by
- Maintaining the operation of the reactor plant
- Effectively utilizing the available resources
- Maintaining and testing the regular activity
- Proper disposal of the waste
Moreover, the reactor plant utilizes the containment vessels for the disposal of waste so that the vessel could promote sufficient strength to withstand the extreme weather conditions and earthquakes or other natural calamities.
In 2016, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,766 kWh, an average of 897 kWh per month. Suppose we take 911 kWh is the energy used in a home per month then this could be calculated as
Heating Oil
Household energy usage per year = Monthly energy usage × 12 months per year
The result we get over here is 10,932 kWh per year
If the community consists of 100 houses then the yearly electricity estimation could be done by
Estimated yearly energy use for your community = Yearly energy estimate for your house × Estimated number of houses in your community
The Estimated yearly energy use for the community will be 1093.2 MWh
According to U.S. Energy Information Agency, 16.9% of energy resources occur from the hydro-electric power, solar, biomass, wind and geothermal resources (Chamorro, Mondéjar, Ramos, Segovia, Martín & Villamañán, 2012). The most important thing to be noted is that these resources are said to be renewable resources. Among these, the solar and the wind energy is the popularly used one (Lin, 2011). The emission of carbon dioxide is greatly reduced by the use of these resources. The benefits and their impacts are many that are as follows:
- Reduction in global warming
- Enhancement of public health
- Lowers the energy price
- Inexhaustible energy
- Promotes better employment and other economic benefits.
Figure 2 clearly shows the electricity produced from the renewable resources. The major contribution of electricity is given by hydro, which means water (Blanco, 2009). The second stand the wind and finally geothermal (Deane, Ó Gallachóir & McKeogh, 2010). In the year 2017, the price of the U.S. residential electricity was about 12.9¢/kWh. Lowa promoted 37% of electricity from the wind resource which was said to be the highest recording in the year 2017. Texas, Oklahoma and Lowa are the leading states of U.S. for the wind power production.
It could be difficult for the whole community to adapt to the new methods. This could lay on the expenditure, location and various other factors (BP 2012). Installing various devices at our home could lead to the following:
- Sufficient space should be allotted in the home that could be difficult since some home does not have enough space
- The expense of the system could increase
- If the system is subjected to a certain malfunction then we will necessarily have some power termination problem
- Efficiency obtained could be in a reduced form
But a general awareness could be created for the community by using certain appliances that could operate by the renewable resources. These power gadgets are as follows:
Rooftop solar panels: This is the most commonly used one that could be installed in the yard. Based on the square feet, we could able to generate 10 watts or even higher depending on the orientation. Solar shingles could also be used when the solar panels are at the end of the lifespan. This could be used extensively during summer.
Wind turbine: This could give the better electricity than the solar and this should be installed at a higher place (Kubiszewski, Cleveland & Endres, 2010). This could make some noise and could damage the look of our home. Other than that this could promote better electricity at all times.
Environmental Impacts of Non-Renewable Energy
Solar water heating: The best source for heating water could be by these solar water heater. This is advised to be used by every household. This heater does not provide electricity rather this could save your power by heating water.
It is known that the renewable energy is said to be costly when compared to the fossils and nuclear power. Moreover, there are some additional conventional improvements that have to be done for the renewable energy technologies. Levelized energy costs (LEC) is the more common term used by the economist that says regarding the ratio of the total cost of the construction of the equipment to the expected annual electricity generated. The LEC cost of the U.S. has been compared with the alternative fuels at the year 2017 and it has been mentioned in the figure given below.
- In several ways, the energy makes the currency of the world that starts with the single- celled organism to several colonies of Africa and the metropolitan cities of New York, Sydney and many more.
- Usage of renewable resources stop the increase of carbon, so plants, animals, and other living could have a major impact that could be saved from the verge of extinction
- There is no purpose of deforestation for building heavy power plants that could stop many animals to migrate to the place
- Moreover, the pollution could be highly reduced and the global warming will also be decreased.
References:
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Branker, K., Pathak, M., & Pearce, J. (2011). A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(9), 4470-4482.
Chamorro, C R., Mondéjar, M E., Ramos, R., Segovia, J J., Martín, M C., & Villamañán, M A. (2012). World geothermal power production status: Energy, environmental and economic study of high enthalpy technologies. Energy, 42(1), 10-18.
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