What is Energy Sense Now?

In most of the world, and certainly in America we are using energy from the moment we get up, throughout the day to the time we go to bed.  Most live in an extremely controlled environment, travel quickly from one location to another, and make the best use of our productive time with a very small percentage of our time dedicated to basic survival, such as growing and gathering food, staying warm enough etc.  We have a portfolio of energy at our fingertips that allow us to be comfortable and make the most of our productive hours to earn a living.  Energy Sense is a way of thinking that breaks down this steady stream of energy that allows us to be the most productive.  The main premise is that energy is the economic lifeline and blood flow that makes us productive.  There are many voices in our current political stage and pseudo scientific stage saying that we have a huge crisis on the horizon driven by human caused uses of CO2.  Energy Sense Now doesn't primarily focus on refuting arguments of global warming, but it is part of the discussion.  Energy Sense Now is focused on the line of thought that if we are going to keep moving ahead with our incredibly efficient means of making use of all energy forms, we cannot replace our current usage for the current functionality with another proposed type of energy without having a CLEAR picture that the replacement will end up providing the same or improved functionality.  The primary alternatives being proposed to Coal, and Oil are Wind, Solar and natural gas.  We will break these down and really get an idea on how these energy sources can be interchanged for equivalent functionality.  Here are some important points to consider when thinking through various types of liquid fuel and electric generation alternatives.

1. Electricity is generated, transmitted across hundreds of miles, and consumed in virtually the same instant of time.
2.  Energy density of batteries vs. liquid fuels is the main barrier to electric only cars.
3.  Wind generation is available at a max of 40% of the time
4.  Solar generation is available for about 15% of the time
5.  Coal generation is available for about 85% of the time


We will dig in and break these facts down into a set of ideas that allow future energy plans to be hammered out that are responsible and don't leave us with 10 second sound bytes that won't deliver what we have right now, in terms of what we get from our energy.

Stay tuned!!