This week at Green-Home-Building.com we are going to examine typical home energy usage. We’re going to explain how your home uses energy and power, what it costs, and the associated environmental impacts.

 

Energy and Power Ratings

 

You are probably familiar with what you are paying the utility company each month, but how is it calculated? Each appliance in your home uses energy for any number of purposes (lighting, cooling, processing, entertainment). Energy is expressed in a unit called Joules. The amount of energy used per second is a Watt (W), 1 Watt = 1 Joule/second. So when we say a microwave is rated at 1000W, that means it uses 1000 Joules of energy for every second it is in use.

 

Ok so appliances use energy, and the rate at which they use energy is their power rating expressed in Watts. Now utility companies bill you on how much energy you use, except they don’t specify their price in terms of Joules. They have come up with a more convenient unit for energy known as the Kilo-Watt-Hour (KWh). A Kilo-Watt-Hour is the amount of energy used by a 1000 W device in one hour. So if we had a 2000W air conditioner running for 4 hours, it would use 8 KWh of energy. So a KWh represents energy, just like a joule, except that it is a more convenient unit. Some appliance are more efficient than others, try to use devices that are not outdated. This will reduce the amount of KWhs your home uses each month.

 

Price of Electricity

 

The utility companies charge you for how many KWhs of energy you use. The average US price for electricity is 11 cents / KWh, but ranges as low as 5 cents and as high as 20 cents. The large variance in price is mainly contributed to the displacement of natural resources. For example, Ontario Canada has one of the world’s largest hydro-electric power generation facilities. The Niagara falls power plant accounts for more than a third of the provinces energy usage. Subsequently electricity costs in Ontario are relatively low. Electricity will be more expensive in remote places, or regions with a small amount of natural resources.

 

The Environmental Cost

 

We take for granted that most of us have electricity at our fingertips whenever we need it. But rarely do we think of where it comes from. It is important to be aware of these things if you plan on living sustainable.The details of power generation are not going to be discussed in this article but here are a few things to keep in mind while using electricity:

 

-A very small percentage of our electricity comes from sustainable or efficient sources (solar, wind, hydro-electric)


-In the US approximately 60% of the electric energy is generated from coal powered plants


-Coal powered plants release roughly 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas into the atmosphere for every kilo-watt-hour of energy generated.

 

As you probably know carbon emissions are the main contributor to global warming. This doesn’t even mention the other toxins and pollutants created in coal fired power production, but that will be a whole other topic in itself. So keep this mind when using electricity. Replace outdated appliances and try to use them only when needed. Your electricity bill is not the only thing being affected by excessive and inefficient usage.

 

 

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