If you've ever wondered about the composition of the electricity assigned to your home (most of us have no clues), there is a quick and easy way to learn. EPA's 'Power Profiler' tool has obviously appeared for at least 2 years, but I only discovered it recently. Although the data has been used to produce main results since 2009, this tool provides some insight into the place where the electricity provides a specific area of the United States. into different generation technologies. Used with other online resources discussed below, there may be a good idea about your area (and the entire United States) with creating renewable energy, if It is not where it can be directed.
Electricity supply incidents
The results are created by the user's zip -based energy configuration. When I entered my own Zip code, I knew that the usual residential areas in NYC received a heavy electric mix. The nucleus is strong in 2nd place, with the minimum number of renewable energy without hydrogen and oil behind. (Of course, those who register for a green energy program in New York, of course, will have another mixture.)
The chart also shows that my electric mixture is stacked to the national average. It can be seen that the entire United States still depends a lot on coal for electricity, with natural gas and nuclear energy for second place both hydroelectricity and renewable energy without hydrogen, but the contribution Their only about 10 % of all electrical types are created.
If you want to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each generation technology, the results in the report will be easy. The names of generation types (brick and blue in the report chart) are connected to the full pages of relevant information. For example, click the 'nuclear' link to release heavy metals into the water of the water they draw. And, so far, the nuclear fuel has spent that they produce as a waste product without a permanent resting place, all places kept on the spot in temporary blocking units.
Plug in some other random zip codes that bring interesting results. Here are results from some other cities of the United States. (See if you can guess where they come from before reading the caption.)
Emissions incident
The power set also provides you with some ideas about the emission intensity of the electricity you use. The generation based on fossil fuel is famous for the amount of CO2 emissions (yes, even natural gas), but the amount of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide is created when fuels such as gas and coal are burned are also very very significant. Although CO2 in the atmosphere is not toxic to humans, it is the main artificial climate change. On the other hand, two other gases are more known for their impact on human health, mainly respiratory system. Sulfur dioxide is also the main cause of acid rain.
Like the generation technologies in the above charts, the emission names in the following charts can be clicked, showing the program to a page with more information about each information.
How to 'make a difference'
EPA, seemingly assuming that users will be disturbed by what they see in the report, does not cause them to hang in despair without having nothing to do with this information. The last part of the web -based report provides a few suggestions on how to take action to make things a little better. Households can learn more about specific emissions for their own businesses, learn about becoming more energy -saving or looking for green energy suppliers. Click on the final part of these 3 options to bring users to a comprehensive list of clean energy suppliers in their area, complete with green energy that each seller (solar, wind , etc.).
Power profile: Try it
As pointed out, the data may not be updated (most of the processes for solar energy on the roof have taken place over the past few years, so it will not be displayed in the results), but it is still sure Certainly to check. You can find the power file of EPA living here.
Other excellent energy exploration tools
It doesn't seem to end for the type of energy data that you can get a little online search. For example, the electricity data browser of the energy information agency (EIA) is an extremely comprehensive interactive tool, allowing you to go into the energy components of the whole country, or regions and areas and areas Status, not mentioning industry incidents and present and present and electricity prices in the past. Another useful tool that has appeared recently is that this great interactive map is combined by NPR by using EPA's Egrid database (also a great resource). The map shows that the coating of each state depends on the different generation technologies that it uses, as well as the existing transmission lines and proposed for wind and solar energy.
This post is supported by AGL Solar