One Chart To Rule Them All  

Elsewhere on that site Gav is this. Scroll down to the energy system diagram.
According to this only 30% of the generated electricity does useful work in the US.. the rest lost in distribution.
And if I read this right... ~80% of energy allocated to transport is wasted!
SP

Yep - you got that right.

That graphic is pretty famous - I've seen it all over the place...

Anon is somewhat confused. The lost energy in the production of electricity is almost all from the generation (conversion from chemical energy to electricity), not the distribution.

The same is true of transportation -- the internal combustion engine wastes the most energy to entropy, and the transmission less so.

These losses are due to thermodynamics of a heat engine. They can't really be considered 'waste' since you cannot, under any circumstances, generate significantly more 'useful work' from a chemical fuel without violating the laws of physics.

Good point.

How about you whip up a new version that shows how much we waste compared to the theoretical maximum amount we could use.

I think the title of that diagram should not use "Consumption"... as this implies availability. I suggest "Transformation" as a better word.
(Also, and I should have thought about this, technically you can't consume energy)

And perhaps it shouldn't be labelled "Electrical System Power Losses" ... especially not under a box labelled "Distributed Electricity".

If they can't be called 'waste' they also can't be called 'losses'.

Perhaps "non-recoverable" (or similar) should be the term we use.

A slightly clearer figure is also available from the Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory.

A diagram like this should be clearer... as it tends to mislead.

I would like to know how big the feedback loop is...? What fraction of the "Useful Energy" is fed back to the energy production stages leaving "Available Energy" or is that somehow incorporated into the "industrial" and "transport" boxes? As drawn, this diagram implies a "free ride" for the production stages.

And what about the Nuclear input side? Afterall, the stuff is still "hot" when we put it "safely" into the ground... so is this a "loss" (ie thermodynamically unrealisable component) or ...?

Perhaps I should take more time to look and think about these things at 11 pm before naively posting them?

SP