Energy consumption

“ But, whatever our resources of primary energy may be in the future, we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material. Long ago I came to this conclusion, and to arrive at this result only two ways, as before indicated, appeared possible—either to turn to use the energy of the sun stored in the ambient medium, or to transmit, through the medium, the sun's energy to distant places from some locality where it was obtainable without consumption of material. ”

“ NET EXCESS POWER— The term `net excess power' means, for any facility, recoverable waste energy recovered in the form of electricity in quantities exceeding the total consumption of electricity at the specific time of generation on the site at which the facility is located. ` (4) PROJECT— The term `project' means a recoverable waste energy project or a combined heat and power system project. ”

“ Why should a living being not be able to obtain all the energy it needs for the performance of its life functions from the environment, instead of through consumption of food, and transforming, by a complicated process, the energy of chemical combinations into life-sustaining energy? ”

“ Instead of transporting the coal to distant places of consumption, we burn it near the mine, develop electricity in the dynamos, and transmit the current to remote localities, thus effecting a considerable saving. ”

“ Let us begin first with the energy implied in fuel. We can, of course, burn fuel, or cause it to combine with the oxygen of the air; and we are thereby provided with large quantities of heat of high temperature, by means of which we may not only warm ourselves and cook our food, but also drive our heat-engines, using it, in fact, as a source of mechanical power. ”

“ Electric energy may also be employed for heating purposes, but in this case it would obviously be impossible for it to compete in point of economy with the direct combustion of fuel for the attainment of ordinary degrees of heat. ”

“ Hirn subsequently attacked the problem from the other side, and showed that if all the heat passing through a steam-engine was turned into work, for every degree Fahr. added to the temperature of a pound of water, enough work could be done to raise a weight of one pound to a height of 772 feet. The general result is that, though we can not create energy, we may help ourselves to any extent from the great storehouse of nature. Wind and water, the coal-bed and the forest, afford man an inexhaustible supply of available energy. ”

“ The woman who cooks in an earthen pot over an open fire uses perhaps eight times more energy than an affluent neighbour with a gas stove and aluminium pans. The poor who light their homes with a wick dipped in a jar of kerosene get one-fiftieth of the illumination of a 100-watt electric bulb, but use just as much energy. ”

“ A piece of coal, for example, has in it the possibility of doing ten times as much work as it is doing now. A piece of radium has stored in it an almost infinite amount of energy. How to change this internal or chemical energy into the other forms of energy with which we are familiar, into heat, or electricity, or ordinary mechanical energy, that is the problem of the future. The utilization of this vast amount of potential energy that is stored up in all forms of matter, the harnessing of it in the service of humanity, this is the problem which confronts the chemist. ”

“ First, there must be uniformity in the character of the power produced; and, second, it must be available everywhere.
Water is the cheapest prime power, but its use is limited to streams or moving bodies of water. If derived from the air currents no dependence can be placed on the regularity of the energy.
Heat is the only universal power on the globe. The sun is the great source of energy. Each year it expends in heat a sufficient force to consume over sixty lumps of coal, each equal to the weight of the earth. ”

“ Now, regarded as a source of energy, such supplies, if far down, will be less effective, for we have to deduct the amount of energy requisite in order to bring them to the surface. The result is that we must contemplate a time, however far distant, when our supplies of coal will be exhausted, and we shall be compelled to resort to other sources of energy. ”

“ Assuming no influx of energy from without, the energy expended in the movement of the gaseous material must be obtained at the expense of the inherent heat and work energy of the gas, and these two functions will decrease simultaneously. The heat and work energy of the gas or its inherent energy is thus taken to provide the energy necessary for the expansive movement. ”

“ Various kinds of oil succeeded it as illuminants, until the discovery of petroleum set them all aside, and gave the world one of its most useful natural products. Then came the illuminating gas, and finally the wonderful electric light, whose brilliant glow lighted up the threshold of the twentieth century. Petroleum, gas and electricity are also beginning to replace coal for heating and cooking purposes,—as coal replaced wood,—and an outlook into the future seems to reveal to us the marvelous electric energy performing these and a thousand other services ”

“ But the energy, though spent, is not lost, for when the liquid again freezes, or when the vapour again condenses, this energy is once more transformed into the shape of sensible heat, just as when a stone is dropped from the top of a house, its energy of position is transformed once more into actual energy. ”

“ The fuels most widely used in this country are coal, gas, and kerosene. Wood is still used for cooking by those who own wood lots, or who live in a district where wood is abundant, but in a sense it is the fuel of the past. Electricity is generated from coal except in the few communities where the electric current is derived through machinery from the energy of falling water but electricity is not in common household use, and is still the method of the future for the average family. ”

“ In tropical regions the heat is not wanted. In the steam-engine, chemical energy is first changed into heat, and heat into mechanical energy; in the body the change is, probably, much of it direct, and not through the intermediation of heat. ”

“ We may, no doubt, burn our ton in such a way as to economize more or less of the heat produced; but, as far as the mere production of heat is concerned, if the quantity and quality of the material burned and the circumstances of combustion be the same, we expect the same amount of heat. ”

“ Now, if we are to coax work out of heat, we must humour its nature, for it may be compared to a pack of schoolboys, who are always ready to run with sufficient violence out of the schoolroom into the open fields, but who have frequently to be dragged back with a very considerable expenditure of energy. So heat will not allow itself to be confined, but will resist any attempt to accumulate it into a limited space. ”

“ We are a nation that is principally reliant for every flip of the switch, for every use of an air- conditioner, for every drive of a car -- almost every drive of a car -- on fossil fuels. That does represent the largest amount of energy use in America. ”

“ So now I'm trying to get the word out so that the invention can be used to capture the free energy of the sun - for camping and for emergencies, yes, but also for every day cooking where electricity is not available and even fuel wood is getting scarce. ”

“ The sea corresponds to the boiler; its cylinder surrounds the earth; it has for its fuel the axial energy of the earth; it has no condenser because it has no exhaust; the work it performs is all expended in producing the fuel. Every operation in the cycle is but an energy transformation, and these various transformations constitute the visible life of the world. ”

“ Reflection will also show us how inconvenient it would be if chemical affinity existed at all distances; if coal, for instance, were to combine with oxygen without the application of heat, it would greatly alter the value of this fuel to mankind, and would materially check the progress of human industry. ”

“ Instead of burning fuel in an on site boiler to produce thermal energy and also purchasing electricity from the grid, a manufacturing facility can use a CHP system to provide both types of energy in one energy efficient step. ”

“ The energy of food is analogous to that of fuel, and serves similar purposes. For just as fuel may be used either for producing heat or for doing work, so food has a twofold office to perform. In the first place, by its gradual oxidation, it keeps up the temperature of the body; and in the next place it is used as a source of energy, on which to draw for the performance of work. ”

“ We may, therefore, expect to see hydrogen and oxygen take an important place in ordinary usages. From the standpoint alone of preservation of fuel, that is to say, of potential energy upon the earth, this new conquest of electricity is very pleasing. Waterfalls furnish utilizable energy in every locality, and, in the future, will perhaps console our great-grandchildren for the unsparing waste that we are making of coal.—La Nature. ”

“ When we are too cold, we can shiver or run or jump, and thus, by doing more work, get more heat too.
The unit of fuel value.—In our studies of food materials, we must find out just how much energy, or working power, can be obtained from each kind. We must have a measure of energy or fuel value; and just as the inch is a measure of length, and the pound of weight, so the Calorie serves as a measure of fuel value. ”

“ But this difficulty disappears at once when we recollect how large an amount of energy can be laid by dormant in a very small piece of matter. A lump of coal no bigger than one's fist, if judiciously employed, will suffice to keep a small toy-engine at work for a considerable time. Now, our food is matter containing large amounts of dormant energy, and our bodies are engines constructed so as to utilize all the energy to the best advantage. A single gramme of beef-fat, if completely burned (that is, if every atom unites with oxygen) , is capable of developing more than 9,000 heat-units ”

“ We find kinetic energy in the motion of the winds and the flow of running water, in the heat-motion of the sun’s rays, in heat-currents on the earth, and in many intermittent movements of bodies acted on by applied forces, natural or artificial. The potential energy of fuel and of food has already been seen to have been derived, at an earlier period, from the kinetic energy of the sun’s rays, the fuel or the food being thus made a storehouse or reservoir of energy. ”

“ Now, in accordance with the principle of conservation, it may be expected that, if a definite quantity of carbon or of hydrogen be burned under given circumstances, there will be a definite production of heat; that is to say, a ton of coals or of coke, when burned, will give us so many heat units, and neither more or less. ”

“ The farmer who makes use of the energy of falling water to generate electricity for light, heat, and power does the same thing—he makes use of the capacity for work stored in water in being lifted to a certain height. As in the case of the gasoline engine, which burns 14 pounds of air for every pound of gasoline, the engineer of the water-power plant does not have to concern himself with the question of how this [Pg 34] natural source of energy happened to be in a handy place for him to make use of it. ”

“ Heat-energy and mechanical energy are mutually convertible, one British thermal unit being the equivalent in heat-energy of 772 foot-pounds of mechanical energy, and one metric calorie equal to 423.55 kilogrammetres of work. ”

“ For generations running water from rivers, streams, and falls has served man by carrying his logs downstream, by turning the wheels of his mill, etc.; and in our own day running water is used as an indirect source of electric lights for street and house, the energy of the falling water serving to rotate the armature of a dynamo (Section 310) .
A more constant source of energy is that available from the burning of fuel, such as coal and oil. The former is the source of energy in locomotives, the latter in most automobiles. ”

“ Some day, large central-station power plants may use direct conversion to improve their efficiencies and reliabilities.
How is Energy Transformed?
What is energy and how do we change it? Energy is a fundamental concept of science involving the capacity for doing work. Kinetic or mechanical energy is the most obvious form of energy. It is defined as
E = 1⁄2 mv2
where
E = energy (expressed in joules)
m = mass of the moving object (in kilograms)
v = velocity (in meters per second)
Energy can also be stored in chemical and nuclear substances or in the water behind a dam. ”

“ Had we an engine which would utilize the energy latent in coal with an economy equal to that with which the sea-gull utilizes the carbon it consumes in its food, we should be able to develop ten times the energy that we now do from the fuel we consume to turn the wheels of industry and trade. ”

“ Suppose that an extremely low temperature could be maintained by some process in a given space; the surrounding medium would then be compelled to give off heat, which could be converted into mechanical or other form of energy, and utilized. By realizing such a plan, we should be enabled to get at any point of the globe a continuous supply of energy, day and night. More than this, reasoning in the abstract, it would seem possible to cause a quick circulation of the medium, and thus draw the energy at a very rapid rate. ”

“ In reality, the material can be said to play the part of a machine or mechanism for the energy process of storage and restoration. No energy process, in fact, ever takes place unless associated with matter in some form. The supporting arms, in this case, form the material factor or agency in the energy operation. All such energy machines, also, are limited in the extent of their operation, by the qualities of the material factors. ”