This week we look at a truly shocking topic - electricity! In our journey to be efficient and sustainable with our resources, one of the things we can do is switch from natural gas to electricity. First, let’s learn about what electricity is and how we use it!

Learn: What is Electricity?

Have you ever seen lightning? Ever gotten a shock? Both are examples of electricity. Electricity is a word that people came up with to describe things they saw that related to the presence or movement of electrons. Why did they call these things electricity? The word elektra in Greek means “amber” – fossilized tree sap that is glassy yellow and can be made into jewelry. The first people to discover static electricity are thought to be ancient Greeks who were polishing pieces of amber with fur and noticed that small bits of leaves stuck to the amber after they rubbed it with fur, much like your hair sticks to a balloon that you rub on your head. Your hair is attracted to the balloon - and the leaves to the amber - because it wants to get back electrons that got rubbed off. What are electrons? To truly understand electrons and electricity, we need to first learn about atoms.

Atoms are the teeny tiny particles that make up everything. You, me, your dog, your house, the air, the mountains, all these things are made up of atoms arranged in a specific way. Inside each atom are even smaller particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Huddled in the nucleus, the center of the atom, are protons, which have a positive charge, and neutrons, which are neutral. Electrons have a negative charge and are held in orbits surrounding the nucleus.

The electrons near the nucleus are held tightly to the atom. Sometimes, the ones farthest away are not. We can push some of these electrons out of their energy levels. We can move them. Electrons in motion are called electric current, which we think of as a form of electricity.

How Do We Make Electricity?

Electricity is commonly made or generated at a power plant. It is becoming more and more common for power plants to use solar panels to generate electricity. Since sunlight is a renewable resource, these power plants generate electricity that is clean, meaning that its generation does not create emissions of greenhouse gases. Most often, though, power plants use big coils of copper wire spinning near huge magnets to make, or generate, electricity. As the coils spin, magnetic fields from the magnets push and pull electrons in the copper wire. The electrons in the copper wire flow into power lines, which bring the electricity to our homes.

It takes a lot of energy to spin the coils of wire that are part of the generators. To do this, power plants can use wind to spin the blades of a turbine connected to the coils. Or they can boil water to make steam that spins the turbine blades. Power plants that boil water to make steam use natural resources as fuel. Some use renewable (won’t run out) resources like sunlight. Other power plants use non-renewable (will run out) resources like coal and natural gas.

Electricity Around the House

Now that you know how electricity gets to your home, let’s look at how we use it around the house. Every appliance that is plugged into an outlet in your home uses electricity. To provide power to your appliances, a circuit must be formed between your item and the outlets in your home. A circuit is a closed loop that lets energy flow into and out of your appliance, thus providing power.

CPAU measures how much electricity your family uses with a unit called kilowatt hours. The more electricity you use in your home, the higher the number of kilowatt hours measured by CPAU. Did you know that even when you turn your appliances “off” they are often still using electricity?

In addition to unplugging devices when they are not in use, your family can switch to more efficient appliances, meaning appliances that use less electricity to complete the same function. Let's use lightbulbs as an example to study efficiency.

Let There Be Light!

oLighting our homes is one of the main ways we use electricity. There are many options to choose from when it comes to selecting lightbulbs to use in your home. Let’s look at three main types of lightbulbs - incandescent, compact fluorescent (CFL), and LED (light-emitting diode) - and how they use electricity differently.

Incandescent lightbulbs light homes by heating tiny filaments (small thread-like wires), until they glow and produce light. If you touch an incandescent light bulb after it’s been on for a while, it will feel very hot and may even burn your hand. That’s a sign that the bulb is using lots of electricity.

CFLs contain mercury gas, a potentially toxic element that produces light by interacting with electricity and the white coating on the inside surface of the glass lightbulb. Because of the mercury, the used bulbs can’t be thrown in the garbage.

LED bulbs are the most efficient choice. An LED is basically a solar cell (how we collect energy from the sun) in reverse: instead of light in, electricity out, you put electricity into the same (solar cell) material and get light. LEDs come in lots of colors and do not get hot. If you use holiday lights, there is a good chance those are LEDs.

Check out the chart below, which compares the energy usage and lifespan of the three types of lightbulbs. Energy flow is measured in watts. The brightness of light is measured in lumens. To understand how each bulb uses energy differently, we examine how many lumens are produced when one watt of energy is flowing.

Now that you’ve assessed your family’s energy usage, you can make better choices about how to use energy in the future.

Stay tuned for our next issue where we’ll look at electrification, switching from using natural gas and gasoline to electricity, and how that impacts the environment.