This I find to be a fascinating breakdown of the production and consumption of electricity for the US grid. I was a little surprised at just how high the losses are, especially as the primary energy measured in for nuclear is considered 100% effective, as is the primary energy coming in from Solar, PV, Wind, Hydro and Geothermal. What that means is the fossil fuels are even less efficient than they appear here. I’ll try to break that out in a new graph soon. I’ll also try to tease out the contribution of combined heat and power. There is an awful lot of heat going on here to be combined…
Electricity Grid, Generation Source, Consumption Sector, (GW), 2008
data: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tNTOu7SQnls6ycD9YOzUDpw&output=html
source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/
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