Equating Energy Efficiency
It’s hard to measure an energy source’s efficiency as there are so many variables involved. However, with the rise of alternate and green energy sources, seeing which is the most efficient can give us some insight into the future of power.
Energy Points is a company that does this analysis for companies. They take the variables, crunch the numbers, and have figured out which energy source is most efficient. The primary measure they use boils down to the return on energy put in to turning a source into electricity. If you follow the link below you can see the chart, but it’s pretty amazing to see how much inefficient some of our most tried and true energy sources are. Fossils fuels have a marginal return, with neither coal, natural gas, or oil coming out above a 40% return. Meanwhile, wind has a 1,164% return, which blows the competition away. That said, output efficiency does not equal cost efficiency. As many of the more efficient technologies are new, the tried and true are still cheaper. For example, despite the efficiency of wind power, it still costs about thirty dollars per Mwh more than fossil fuels.
Check out the charts in the article below-
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/what-is-the-most-efficient-source-of-electricity-1754/#utm_sguid=139180,dcd86145-53ad-95b2-7610-d1130a675ff0
