EGEE 101
Energy and the Environment

Unit 1, Our Electric Life

PrintPrint

Americans use a lot of "juice." Do you ever wonder where it all comes from?

Unit One covers energy use in the home, electricity generation, and coal issues.

We start with what you use (electricity) and then work back to its generation, and fuel issues.

Click here for a transcript of the Unit 1 Overview.

Hello. Today's lesson is all about energy use in the home. So let's go and look at my home. As you can see currently, it is a snowy day.

And so when we ask about what our energy-- large-scale energy use is in the home, and it is certainly a case of heating in central Pennsylvania. Obviously, in other locations, Central Florida, for example, it would be cooling. But you can see behind me the holes on the top of the roof. That's my air conditioning unit where the air jets come in, 1970 sort of fad.

But if we go and look at where I get my electricity from, my heating from, then it is from baseboard heating. And if you can see behind my right shoulder, that's an electric baseboard. Obviously, I've got electricity going on with lights and other things. Obviously a lot of day lighting as well, with the windows.

So back to heat. Obviously, the issue with heat is we have a variety of fuels we can use. 100 years ago, 50 years ago, there'd be a lot of coal use in Pennsylvania. That's mostly dwindling and only out now in the Anthracite Region, although, natural gas is heavily used as a heating fuel.

Propane, a little bit less, biomass, et cetera, et cetera. But the two big ones are natural gas and electricity. Newer homes, if they have access to electricity-- to natural gas will use natural gas.

Let's see, let's go take a look at some other big items. So the big items would be the water heater, which is in the basement. And that hot water, obviously, goes into the things like the dishwasher, the clothes washing, showers. And so the amount of energy utilized, again, depends on the fuel you use.

Again, you might use a natural gas hot water heater, or you could be using electricity. And depending on how many people, et cetera, and depending on the size of the house, these are the things that impact how much energy you're going to use and, of course, where you are and the particular seasonal transformations that occur. And so things like heating degree days and cooling degree days get covered later on.

The things that are going to impact how much energy we utilize is insulation in the house, air sealing, things like that. Obviously, things like a open fireplace would cause some issues. So in the kitchen, we've got the fridge. It's essentially a heat pump.

We've got a microwave. We've got an oven. We've got various other pieces that make utilization and my life a lot easier. So my microwave, my coffeemaker, et cetera, et cetera.

So we're going to learn about air infiltration. We're going to learn about day lighting, use of deciduous trees to stop the lights coming in-- the light coming in on a summer day. And this type of material is what's going to be covered.

So you can see that tree in front of my house doesn't have any leaves. It's deciduous, and that's helpful for shading. We want lots of light, but we don't want lots of heat in the summer.

A couple of things about lighting, I've got a variety of lights in the house. This would have been a fluorescent light until last year. Now, is an LED light. I do have some incandescents.

And if you take a look up here, I have a chandelier. It's a bit crappy. It's not very good task lighting for my puzzle that I'm doing. So I'm going to have to replace that with an LED.

And over here, I have got-- let's see-- I have got compact fluorescent and an LED light. They're a little difficult to see. I won't buy any more compact fluorescents. And a little LED sort of decorative tree.

So that's the lesson material today. It's about how we use energy in the house, could also be businesses. Of course, whenever we have the creation of energy that we utilize, Be it electronics, watching computers, TV, sound system, somewhere that electricity is being generated. And the way we generate electricity currently, there can be considerable pollution and emissions associated with your use of energy. So anyway, I will see you later.

Credit: JPM
Electricity pylon
An electricity pylon suspending high voltage electricity cables

Lesson 1, You and The Plug: Electricity

Electricity powers much of our of life and enhances our quality of living. This lesson covers the contribution of electricity to the home and what we can do to conserve and use it more efficiently (lower bills and reduce environmental impacts).

The lesson will focus on electricity use, energy efficient appliances, home and water heating systems, the design of homes to capture solar energy, lighting issues, and energy conservation.

Lesson 2, Behind The Plug: Generating Electricity — Fossil Fuels and Nuclear

Smoke Stacks
A lovely coal pile, flue gas stacks (tall and thin), and cooling towers (shorter and wider)

How electrical energy is generated: one lesson covers electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

Lesson 3, Behind The Plug: Generating Electricity — Renewables

4 images: hydro dam, power lines, solar panels, wind mills
Renewable energy continues to grow.

This lesson covers renewables and their remarkable recent growth.

Lesson 4, Coal & Coalbed Methane (some Shale Gas)

Picture of Coal
More Coal!

Coal used to dominate electricity generation in the US, currently providing the raw energy for ~30% of the electricity we use. Coal formation, its extraction (from surface and undergroun mines), and the cleaning processes are themain topics.

And with Pennsylvania's rich coal history, mining safety and lots of other interesting pieces of PA history will also be covered.

We will return to all of these subjects in Unit 3 when discussing pollution control issues.