Electricity Production in the US Over Time

Interesting, 0.9% electricity was generated from wood in 2012.

...."Industry accounts for most wood and wood-waste fuel consumption in the United States. The top industrial users are wood product and paper manufacturers. They use lumber mill and paper mill waste to produce steam and electricity, which saves money because it reduces the amount of other fuels and electricity they must purchase to operate their facilities.

In 2022, the industrial sector accounted for about 61% of total U.S. consumption of wood and wood waste. Wood and wood waste also accounted for about 8.5% of industrial sector end-use energy consumption and 6.9% of total industrial sector energy consumption.²

The residential sector is the second-highest consumer of wood for energy in the United States. Wood is used in homes throughout the United States for heating as cord wood in fireplaces and wood-burning appliances, and as pellets in pellet stoves.

In 2022, wood energy accounted for about 4.0% of residential sector end-use energy consumption and 2.5% of total residential energy consumption. In 2020, 8.9% of all U.S households (about 11 million) used wood for energy (mostly for space heating). About 2.2 million households used wood as the main space-heating fuel.³

In the electric power sector, several power plants burn mostly wood to generate electricity, and some coal-burning power plants burn wood chips with coal to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Most of the commercial sector's wood use for energy is for heating."....

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biomass/wood-and-wood-waste.php#

Although it is not noted in the pie, it was about the same this year....

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

In many rural sections of the US, the source of heat for the house is a wood burning stove in the kitchen...cooking and heating all in one....

...."In 2022, total annual U.S. electricity net generation by utility-scale electric power plants (plants with at least one megawatt of electric generation capacity) of about 4.23 trillion kilowatthours (kWh) from all energy sources resulted in the emission of about 1.65 billion metric tons—1.82 billion short tons—of carbon dioxide (CO₂). This equaled about 0.86 pounds of CO₂ emissions per kWh."...

https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/analysis-demand-side-electrification-futures.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

US total accumulative co2 emissions =~ 430 billion tons

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?time=1891..latest&country=~USA

..."In 2021, global carbon dioxide emissions reached a record-high of 37.1 billion metric tons (GtCO₂), of which the U.S. accounted for 14 percent.Dec 18, 2023"...

Wow .86 lb of CO₂ per KWh.....that seems like a lot, more than I was thinking anyway...let's see that's 7.5 ft³ or .21 m³ ...

I'm sorry to see coal use declining. It is by far the least expensive energy source.

Thank you S.E. for this useful graph. Here in the Enchanted "Aisle" we have acres of solar farms. We import over 80% of our food, ridiculous as we have a 12 month growing season. The electric bills now state, as renewable energy sources become available you may experience lower electric rates. The former statement was that lower rates were guaranteed. My residential rate varied from a high of $.282/KWHr to $.197. They are currently paying $.20/KWhr to the wind providers. Hard to see how they are going to squeeze lower rates. They have explored nuclear, but I hesitate to support that in any nation that measures speed in MPH, distance in Km, gasoline in Ltrs and pays for it in dollars.

Ha ha, yeah I hear that... I don't see the price of anything going down, it's like the government spends all it's time thinking up fee's they can impose on you for your own good....all the time claiming they are lowering taxes...

We work directly in the power generation sector. I am going to guess that natural gas will continue to replace coal, because new NG plants are mostly what we see.

These things seem obvious to me:

1. Energy usage is going to continue to increase.

2. Generation Capacity is already starting to have issues keeping up.

3. Utilities are way behind in transmission line maintenance.

4. Utilities' costs are going up. Cost cutting usually leads to less over all system maintenance.

5. Government mandates for less pollution are going to also raise costs and reduce some generation capacity .

6. Removing Dams that generate electricity. Enough said

Bad policy has led to these problems. More bad policy is probably not going to help.

That said expect brownouts in the near future. A year or two of that ought to be enough to get people motivated to get something done about it. Long term poor system maintenance in the generation and transmission line system is going to take a good while to fix. Copper for the needed new transmission lines is already in short supply.

Sure hope we get a bunch of mini nuke reactors for local power generation. Faster please.

I think they have been using aluminum for transmission lines for some time. Yes, I think we need to get busy improving our electrical infrastructure. Bringing new nuclear (Gen IV please) plants online is long overdue.

Can't talk for the specifics in the US, but you're heading in the right direction. It is not just about transmission line maintenance - it is also about transmission line capacity. More generation (whether traditional power plant or renewable) requires some adjustments to the grid here and there. Lack of maintenance on our generating plants has caused rolling blackouts over here (when there is an app where you can see your "loadshedding" schedule for your suburb, you the level of sh*te you're in). This takes years to fix, and new traditional plants takes forever to build. Policy is indeed an issue. Storage is going to become more important.

BTW, over here copper cables aren't used anymore - whether at transmission or distribution (both HV & LV) level - as everything gets stolen, so just aluminium conductors and cables. There are also some innovative high-temperature low-sag conductors being used in the States for years now, that allows more current via the same pylons.

Also, I just know someone will propose nuclear for baseload (technically a sound idea). Let's just agree on a project where the utility pays a pre-construction agreed-on price per kWh from the independent nuclear plant - that way the risk for the inevitable massive cost and time overruns lies with the generating plant, not the utility. Whether that is large or small modular units, I don't care, all power procurement should probably be this way.

Let's just agree on a project where the utility pays a pre-construction agreed-on price per kWh from the independent nuclear plant - that way the risk for the inevitable massive cost and time overruns lies with the generating plant, not the utility.

That's an interesting idea. Removing the risk from the utilities and transferring it to the generating facility (or maybe the government?) should make the utilities more willing.

Sure hope we get a bunch of mini nuke reactors for local power generation. Faster please.

SAFER ONES TOO!

As demand for electricity continues to grow I expect that new generation capacity will be met with solar, wind and natgas, each taking a few percentage points from coal...so little change in CO2 emissions when all is said and done....Natural gas may emit half as much CO2 as coal, but when you generate twice as much electricity, well that's a break even scenario...

With so called renewable sources of electrical generation, wind and solar, they can't operate dependably without an equal amount of backup capacity from an on demand source, natgas, nuclear, coal...the on demand source can't make money operating intermittently, so they need a storage strategy to continue running full time, that way they can switch back and forth following demand...that storage medium seems to be most likely hydrogen at this time...We need more fuel cell vehicles to make this work though, dependable fuel cell vehicles....

"The fuel cell stacks are designed to last the lifetime of the vehicle, about 150,000–200,000 miles. At the end of its lifespan, the fuel cell will be disassembled and the materials recycled, similar to what happens with vehicle components today. A fuel cell stack is about the size of a roll-aboard suitcase."

https://h2fcp.org/sites/default/files/FCEV_factbooklet.pdf

..."Nearly 28 GW of new US generating capacity added in 2021 ...

The U.S. added 27,959 MW of new generating capacity to the grid in 2021, 12% more than the previous year, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.

Meanwhile, 8,556 MW of capacity was retired in 2021, netting an additional 19,403 MW available to the U.S. power grid.

Wind and solar capacity dominated the new additions, accounting for 41% and 36%, respectively. Natural gas-fired capacity, which made up about a quarter of additions in 2020, made up less than a fifth in 2021."...

...Nearly all of this was intermittent capacity so probably maybe 7-8 GW actual capacity...

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2023/12/20231215-revozero.html

recharge in minutes bothers me in 2 ways:

1- It depends on your charging system being able to put out enough amps of current. Maybe the battery can accept it, but can the charger put it out?

2- The typical use of "in minutes" implies a short time. But you can measure any length of time in minutes. How about a charging time of 150 minutes? Or maybe 400?

I guess it's "advertising hype!"

The recharge is a hydrogen tank refill.

OK, I missed that, but the hydrogen is only a "range extender,"--you don't get the full 700 miles from H2. But it doesn't say how much. So I'll stick with "advertising hype" until we know more. Plus, I usually/always wonder about "peer review."

https://www.thedrive.com/news/harvard-claims-holy-grail-ev-battery-breakthrough-but-when-will-we-see-it

When does exponential growth breakdown due to a lack of some necessary resource? How much energy can we use if it's not there?