>> What percentage (of the '98 quads') is given up to
>> transmission loss?
>
> Not taking time to look it up, so from memory about 35%
> of energy is used generate electricity. I think as much
> as 10% of that may be transmission losses.
That's almost exactly the same SWAG I was going to make. Electricity seems to be the only energy source that has significant transmission loss. I did look it up, and the recent number is more like 6% -- 2004 saw 3945 bkwh and 233 are estimated to have been "used" as transmission loss.
HOWEVER ... there's a different idea of what "loss" can mean, and I think it's captured really effectively in a graph that the Energy & Environment folks at Lawrence Livermore (a DOE lab) put together. I think 2002 is the latest work they've done:
http://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php
That shows that power generation takes 38.2 quads and produces 11.9 quads of electricity. the overall efficiency here is something like 31%.
FWIW, there's a huge amount of data here:
The quarterly report is chock-full of fun.
[ BTW, a 'quad' is one quadrillion Btu ... some of this stuff is complicated by the fact that electicity isn't tracked in quads, it's tracked in billion kw/hr ]
We're still making about half of our electricity from coal, 20% nuclear, 12% natural gas, 6% hydro ...
> Wind electricity is now produced in the U.S. for 4 cents
> per kWh. (Documented by the IRS.)
Er ... isn't that a misleading figure? The IRS cares about this number because it's used to figure out the tax credits involved: the actual "cost" is much higher.
/jordan