Renewable energy in United States

Renewable energy in United States

Abstract

There has been increased discussion from different world and government environmental institutions on the urgent need to embark on nonrenewable energy production in unite states. Innovation on non-renewable sources of energy will lead to reduced usage of fossil fuels in United States. This concern to shift to renewable production of electric energy was ignited after there was overproduction of the poisonous greenhouse gases which leads to occurrence of global warming .there has been a great interest to rank United States as the leader in production and generation of renewable energy. Renewable sources of energy are so finite hence the government should utilize its availability to produce safe and sufficient energy to its people .renewable energy is more beneficial compared to non-renewables electric production from coal, natural gas and fossils.one of the exceptional benefits of    renewable sources of energy is that it depends on sources which may not exhaust or decline over time. Electric energy production using now renewable energy is much safe to the environment because there are no gas emissions or other pollution during the production.

Introduction

The United States of America has been encountering very stiff challenges on reaching decisions about the future energy generation. Their big concern and objective is to produce a renewable energy which has less harm to the society while providing sufficient electric energy to United States .renewable energy sources are usually used on three typical types of usage. This purposes includes, production of electricity, bio-products manufacturing, heating and cooling systems. The literature on renewable energy production is voluminous hence this paper focuses on electricity production using renewable resources. From past records, in 2010, renewables sources were used in generating approximately 12% of the total electric energy generated in United States. This paper includes information on producing renewable energy from renewable sources such wind, solar, hydro-electric power, and the geothermal heat energy (Bird, et al, pg. .32).

Solar energy

Renewable energy is produced from natural biodegradable resources such as the solar energy wind powers ,rainfall and water and the geothermal heat energy.in 2010 the government of the united states  ,in the sector of the interior approved the first reliable and biggest solar energy plant to be established in the state of California. The solar energy projected is projected to be divided into two projects covering around 7000 acres of the federal government land. The projected is predicted to take a period of 30 years as well as providing more than 1500 job vacancies to the United States citizens. Sterling energy systems sun catcher technology is the model of the solar technology which will be used in California solar plant.in order to establish this plant, there will be need of approximately 30 thousand solar dishes to generate around 700 megawatts providing electricity to more 600000 homesteads in United States.

The other project is called the chevron lurcene valley solar project is prospected to use photovoltaic technology within san Bernardino county .the station will consist of approximately 50 thousand solar panels producing 45 megawatts, hence providing electricity to more than 30 000 homesteads in united states. However there are various solar projects awaiting authentication and approval by the department of the interior. Different countries across the globe are adopting the establishment of solar energy

Wind energy

Increased wind deployment can have significant and very wide ranging positive effects for United States energy mix and environmental goals. United States wind energy sources are very reliable on certain parameters used to calculate it. While calculating the amount of wind energy in United States you should create a close attention to those parameters. These variants include the turbine heights and capacity dimensions. For instance the wind strength varies with the height from the earth’s surface .its commonly estimated that wind yields an effective amount of energy when the turbines are elevated to a height of about 100 meters above the earth’s surface (Wiser, et al,pg.472).

Wind energy sources in United States are divides in two types, onshore and offshore sources. Wind technology advances, have grown to the level of establishing lower wind speed sites. Although the wind production sector is still being influenced by the level of the energy demand, transmission and integration limitation, fluctuation in raw material cost as well law contract uncertainties and stiff competition from the other forms of energy production.

Wind power markets and economies

Business ventures in wind energy production and deployment has continued in financing to support industry development .According to a report generated by the United Nations, it has been revealed that the world ventures in production of wind energy had grew up to 14 billion in 2004 up to a maximum of 80 million in 2013 in terms of capitals. The domestic manufacturing and processing cost of the wind production system is very costly. The fast development of technological innovation in United States has led to production of wind energy even in the lower economic areas within the country. Designing of larger turbines, effective and efficient manufacturing process, and perfect siting of wind plants has lowered the manufacturing cost in United States. The cost of wind production is now similar to that of coal related plants. Wind energy is one of the most competitive technologies of energy production in terms of cost. The cost of wind energy production has reduced by a rate of 80% for the past few decades in United States. Wind production only need maintenance cost of the turbines since no fuel is required in wind energy production (cheng &jay, pg.34).

Geothermal energy

This is one of the major sources of renewable energy used to produce electricity in the United States. Despite the fact that its growth has been slower compared to the one of the use of solar and wind energy geothermal energy has been a great source of electricity in the US.  Most of geothermal energy is produced in the western states of the country (Millstein, et al, pg.171).

In order to generate geothermal electricity, a well is normally drilled directly into an underground geothermal reservoir that has water at the temperatures of three hundred and seventy one degrees Celsius. The steam is then trapped and brought in to the surface which is then used to run turbines which produce electricity. According to Geothermal energy association, geothermal water can also be on the surface of the earth as hot spring or geysers.

In 2011 the total net geothermal electricity produced was at ten thousand eight hundred and ninety eight million kilowatt-hours which was produced in the first eight months of the year. That totaled to 10% of the total amount produced during that year (Ellaban, et al, pg.748).

Geothermal electricity provides heating and cooling energy for three million Americans. When comparing to the other sources of energy I the United States geothermal energy produces is just 4% of the total electricity generated by other sources in the first eight months of the year. The state of California produces the highest amount of geothermal electricity. It produces almost 5% of the of the states total power production. The following are some of the factors that have influenced to the growth of geothermal energy in the United States.

Technology costs are one of the major factors that influence the production of geothermal electricity. There is new technology which is being developed lately referred as enhanced geothermal systems. This technology allows the greater use of geothermal resources in other areas. However, the cost of this technology is higher than that of convectional geothermal power plants and other sources of renewable energy.

Location is another factor which influences the generation of geothermal electricity. Geothermal power plants can only be located in specific places that have deposits of high temperatures and underground water. The other factor which has influenced the growth geothermal energy in the

United States is the transmission access.

Most of geothermal energy is produced from the western states and there has been lack of access to the lines which something which has hindered its growth. Completion lead times of geothermal power plants are also another factor which has hindered the growth of geothermal energy in the united-sates. The time taken to complete one geothermal power plant is four to eight years which is longer than the time taken to complete solar and wind power plants. Those and other factors have been hindering the growth of geothermal energy in the United States.

Biomass

Biomass refers to all the organic substances and matter emanating from all sorts of plants including the algae, trees, and domestic crops. These plants absorb the solar energy through a process known as photosynthesis. Biomass energy refers to the transformation of biomass in to useful modes of energy such as electrical energy, heat power and the liquid fuels. Biomass energy originates from the earth’s surface after plant matter decays after cutting or after remains got after processing of plant materials.to are specific, biomass energy can be well described as the control of the solar produced materials.one of the technologies within biomass production realm is the bio-gas production (Turchi, et al, pg.54). Liquid bio-gas is tapped into electric energy and used for lighting. Bio-gas is also super refined to be used as a cooking gas.

Conclusion

Renewable energy reduces the amount of carbon gases released in to the atmosphere and this will also been addressing global warming. Studies conducted by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Laboratory indicate that the United States can generate a lot of its electricity from renewable energy by the year 2050. This study found out that an eighty percent renewable future is practical with the current available technologies in areas like in wind turbines, bio power, geothermal energy, solar photovoltaic and hydroelectric power.

This study has also shown that the renewable sources of energy will be able to meet electricity demands of Americans all across the country. By increasing renewable energy in the united states by eighty percentage will however not limit the energy choices to one specific path way. Rather the study shows that a variety of renewable energy scenarios will provide the country with numerous pathways to achieve this goal.

Work cited,

Cheng, Jay, ed. Biomass to renewable energy processes. CRC press, 2017.

Ellabban, Omar, Haitham Abu-Rub, and Frede Blaabjerg. “Renewable energy resources: Current status, future prospects and their enabling technology.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 39 (2014): 748-764.

Wiser, Ryan, et al. “The environmental and public health benefits of achieving high penetrations of solar energy in the United States.” Energy 113 (2016): 472-486.

Millstein, Dev, et al. “The climate and air-quality benefits of wind and solar power in the United States.” Nature Energy 2.9 (2017): 17134.

Bird, Lori, Jaquelin Cochran, and Xi Wang. Wind and solar energy curtailment: Experience and practices in the United States. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2014.

Turchi, Craig S., et al. Use of low-temperature geothermal energy for desalination in the Western United States. NREL/TP-5500-65277, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, US Department of Energy, Golden, Colorado, 2015 Search PubMed, 2015.