Renewable Energy Resources
On average, the world’s population consumes about 15 TW (terawatts) or 15 trillion watts per day. Germany, Japan and the U.S. are the world’s 3 highest energy-consuming nations although their aggregate population represents only a fraction of the world population. A single watt is a derived (computed mathematically) unit of power which equals 1 joule of energy per second. Its name came from James Watt, the chief developer of the steam engine. A watt therefore measures either the amount of energy that is produced or the energy being consumed.
Wind energy
In common commercial language, energy use is measured in kilowatts or 1 thousand watts (1,000 watts) or more precisely, in kilowatt-hours per month. This becomes the monthly electric utility bill that consumers pay. Bigger units of measures are megawatts or 1 million watts (1,000,000 watts), gigawatts or 1 billion watts (1,000,000,000 watts) and lastly, terawatts or 1 trillion watts (1,000,000,000,000 watts). The next still higher measurements are petawatt or 1015 watts, exawatt or 1018 watts, zettawatt or 1021 watts, and yottawatt or 1024 watts. As a comparison, the Sun produces about 386 yottawatts of radiant energy daily.
Wind turbines
Scientifically, most energy on Earth is derived ultimately from the Sun. The earth’s energy resources come from the sun’s rays hitting the earth to produce either fossil fuels (non-renewable “preserved energy” formed years ago) or renewable energy such as wind, solar, wave and tidal power. Renewable energy is subdivided into direct such as solar energy (thermal radiation) or indirect such as biomass (bio-fuels), wind, wave (ocean surface water), tidal (gravitational pull) and hydroelectric. Largely untapped, the absorption of solar energy into the earth’s atmosphere creates wind energy estimated at 870 terawatts from a height of 80 meters from the earth’s surface. Total solar energy reaching the earth’s surface is a mind-boggling 86,000 terawatts daily! An estimated 87% (with a 5% margin of error) of total energy production is from the combustion (burning) of fossil fuels mainly coal, gas and oil. Only 3 energy sources do not come from the sun directly: tidal power (lunar gravitation on the earth’s water surface), geothermal power (due to geologic pressures), and nuclear power (chemical/electrical reactions at the atomic level).
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