High School

1. Suppose the total U.S. primary energy consumption was approximately 100.2 quads (or 100.2 quadrillion BTUs) annually. Given that the population of the USA is about 330 million, how many kWh/day does each person in the USA use?

*Hint: To solve this, first convert the 100.2 BTUs to kWh using any of the available online tools, then divide that number by the number of people in the US and again by the number of days in a year.*

2. Take the power consumed by an average person in the USA (from question 1) and extrapolate the power needed if all of the 7.5 billion people in the world used this much power. Express your answer in TerraWatts (trillions of Watts). For reference, the actual global power consumption in 2021 was about 19 TW.

Answer :

Final answer:

Each person in the USA uses approximately 243.92 kWh/day. If the entire global population used energy at this rate, the required power would be about 76.225 terawatts (TW), much higher than the actual 2021 global consumption of 19 TW.

Explanation:

The question involves converting energy consumption in BTUs to kilowatt-hours and then determining the average energy usage per person per day in the United States, before scaling that figure to a global population estimate.

First, we convert the total U.S. energy consumption of 100.2 quads to kWh. One quad is equivalent to 1.055 × 1018 joules, which is approximately 293.071 terawatt-hours (TWh). So, 100.2 quads equal 100.2 × 293.071 TWh, which is 29379.34 TWh. Next, we convert TWh to kWh: 1 TWh is 1 million MWh or 1 billion kWh, so 29379.34 TWh is 29,379,340,000,000 kWh.

To find the average usage per person per year, we divide 29,379,340,000,000 kWh by the U.S. population of around 330 million people, obtaining 89,030.12 kWh per person per year. Finally, to get the average usage per person per day, we divide this by 365 days, yielding 243.92 kWh/day per person.

To find the power needed if all of the 7.5 billion people in the world used this much power, we multiply 243.92 kWh/day by 7.5 billion, resulting in 1,829,400,000,000 kWh/day for the global population. To convert this daily energy usage to power in terawatts, we divide the daily kWh by 24 to get hourly kWh, then by 1,000 to convert to terawatt-hours (TWh), and finally, we multiply by the number of hours in a day to get the power in terawatts. The result is 76.225 TW.

The actual global power consumption in 2021 was about 19 TW, indicating that if everyone on Earth lived like the average American, the power needed would be significantly higher than current global consumption.

Final answer:

Each person in the USA uses Y kWh/day, and if all 7.5 billion people in the world used this much power, it would be Z TW.

Explanation:

To calculate the kWh/day used by each person in the USA, we need to follow these steps:

  1. Convert the total U.S. primary energy consumption from BTUs to kWh.
  2. Divide the converted value by the number of people in the USA.
  3. Divide the result by the number of days in a year.

Let's calculate each step:

  1. Converting BTUs to kWh:
    1 quad = 1 quadrillion BTUs
    1 kWh = 3.412142 BTUs
    100.2 quads * 1 quadrillion BTUs/quad * 1 kWh/3.412142 BTUs = X kWh
  2. Calculating kWh/day per person in the USA:
    X kWh / 330 million people = Y kWh/person
  3. Calculating power needed if all 7.5 billion people in the world used this much power:
    Y kWh/person * 7.5 billion people = Z kWh
    Z kWh = Z/1,000,000,000,000 TW

Therefore, each person in the USA uses Y kWh/day, and if all 7.5 billion people in the world used this much power, it would be Z TW.

Learn more about calculating energy consumption per person and global power consumption here:

https://brainly.com/question/25320158

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