Welcome.

This is our first module in a global

sustainable energy class and, and we
start at the beginning, as appropriate, a
history of energy, and go back to when we
just had human power.
Just us, whatever we could do in a day is
whatever got accomplished.
We carried things or used very simple
machines.
So, how much work can a single human
accomplished?
ow about this young lady here carrying
water on her head with a, an earthen wear
pottery style jug?
!ou know, looking at that photograph,
that"s a modern photograph.
That"s not an old #odak overe$posed reds
and colors that"s a modern photograph.
So, that"s how people live now and many,
many parts of this world.
So let"s take a look at some of the
things and where we"re going with that.
So, first of all, we gotta get some units
straight in our heads.
% watt is a unit of power.
We named it after a guy, you know, how
typical scientists are, they name it
after some famous guy.
So James Watt inventor of a modern day
steam engine.
&ot the first one, but the one that
really took off, and we"ll talk about
that in a second.
he has a unit of power named after him.
'ower is energy per unit time.
%nd the energy, the unit of energy is
joule.
So, watt can be e$pressed as a joule per
second.
So, if a human being can average.
("m not talking about an athlete that can
really put some output out for a short
period of time.
)ut ( mean, a regular human being, *
hours a day can average about +, watts of
power output.
So, what"s the daily total of this work?
-aily output is a simple e.uation there.
(t"s +, watts or or joules per second,
times how many seconds in an hour?
That"s /011 seconds in an hour.
Times * hours a day.
The daily output of a human being is
about 2.30 megajoules per day.
Where the capital 4 stands for mega or
million.
%nother way to look at this is a block of
energy consumed over a period of time.
(t"s sort of like a light bulb in your
house.
So, if ( turn that light bulb on, a 311
watt incandescent because we haven"t
changed over to energy efficient light
bulbs yet.
That"s another module.
if we run that for a 31 hour period, (
can multiply that out.
The answer is 311 watts times 31 hours is
e.ual to a 3111 watt hours.
&ow, watch how that"s noted.
5ook at the units carefully.
(t"s not watts per hour, it"s watt hours
on the same line.
-issecting the units, a, a watt is a
joule per second, multiply this by time,
that"s in hours.
So, we have joules per second times,
time.
(f we use a suitable conversion getting
rid of the time differential in seconds
and hours, we"re left with joules or just
energy.
So, really what you"re doing when you buy
3111 watt hours from the utility or one
kilowatt hour, you"re just buying a block
of energy.
So, in human scale, an output of +, watts
per day and, and for eight hours a day,
it gives you 1.0 kilowatt hours per day.
That"s a basic human output.
So, we lived that way for a number of
years, thousands of years, actually,
until we domesticated animals.
We thought, wow, you know, if ( can get
this cow to do work for me, he"s just
sitting there munching grass.
ow about if ( get the cow to do work for
me?
So, they harnessed early cows,
domesticated those animals and come to
find out, the early harnesses did not
transmit the power efficiently.
%nd a cow was only worth about four
humans.
So, at this point, it still was cost
effective.
(t"s really terrible to treat it in
economic terms, but the way societies
worked back then, it was still cost
effective to have slaves rather than
cows.
Well, years go by and centuries,
probably, and they came up with a better
harness for the cows that transmitted
power more efficiently.
%nd so, cows were worth about si$ human
beings.
%t that point that"s more effective to
own a cow.
%nd off we go to domesticated
agriculture.
So, simple machines throughout our
history, we tram we go through time and
we end up with this is a disk harrow.
'ulled by two donkeys with a guy sitting
on a seat human powered machines or
pumps, and a hand crank water pump in the
front yard of the farmhouse.
6r this donkey pulled disk harrow.
where do we compare?
ow do we compare that in what we do
today?
Just to, to throw some numbers at you ("m
going to look down here because ( can"t
memori7e everything.
)ut we use about 3*./ million barrels a
day in this country, the 8nited States of
%merica, of oil.
&ow, a barrel of oil is 92 gallons.
So, ( can work that out to how many
gallons is, are used per day in this
country.
Well, we also have about thirty /11 and
30 million people in this country.
So, if ( work that out, it"s about 2.9/
gallons per day per person of crude oil.
4y own little pot of crude oil, ( have
every day.
Well a gallon of crude oil"s about
391,111 )T8.
That"s another unit of energy, )ritish
thermal unit.
So, ( can work that out, convert it all
back down to our early human output of
1.0 kilowatt hours a day.
With the proper conversions, ( come up
with that 2.9/ gallons a day, ( get is
e.ual to having about 300 of my own
personal slaves to do whatever ( want
them to do.
(magine that, 300 people doing whatever
you want.
( mean, kings of old didn"t even have
that kind of lu$ury.
%nd yet, we take that for granted.
4any areas in the world, you could see,
and some of us have come from these areas
and have traveled to these areas.
So, we see this.
There"s a a couple cows pulling a single
row plow, a person behind that.
5ooks like a pretty big field for those
two cows and that one person.
&e$t to it, we have farm carts donkey
carts to bring merchandise to and from
the farms.
%nd again animal:powered vehicles.
6ver here, we have in olland, it looks
like wind power, early wind power.
So, we"ve gone from humans, then animals,
now to early simple machines.
Wind power in olland, they"re used to
pump water out to drain the land, also to
grind grain.
;arly designs were inefficient, but hey,
the fuel was free and plentiful.
&ow, we don"t have a picture, but another
early model of a a wind:power vehicle or
not vehicle, but machine was <=68>? was
a >reek sailwing.
;$cuse me, there, working through a cold.
&ow, out in the >reat %merican West, you
know, they first thought it was a desert.
!ou know, come to find out there was
water underneath that desert and a lot of
nice soil.
This is an %merican Jacobs %eromotor.
;arly, water pump that was driven by
wind.
&e$t to that, we a have a 'ersian
windmill.
wind came from 3 direction and that was a
vertical access machine.
That"s about 3,,11 years old.
ow about water power?
Well, how many times you see cities
spring up?
( mean, look at a map.
They"re on the borders of oceans, on the
borders of rivers.
(t"s because you had a, a water power for
energy and transportation.
)ut here, we have an e$ample, the picture
to the right, the drawing is an overshot
water wheel where the water comes in over
the top.
( think, you can"t really tell, but the
picture, the actual picture, ( think, had
stream flow where the water flow.
(t"s not a dam, but the, the force of the
water moving hits the bottom of the water
wheel, and that can grind grains or even
run a lumber mill to saw woods, wood.
So, if we take a look at this, early
mechanical output of a windmill is about
3., to 31., kilowatts.
&ow, that"s a bunch.
Think about a human being.
That was 1.1+, kilowatts, +, watts.
ow about the early water wheel?
The mechanical output might have been 3.,
to /.* kilowatts.
%gain, .uite a bit more than early single
human or even cows.
(n 3***, )rush a =harles )rush came up
with a early wind power machine, output
was 32 kilowatts.
( mean, completely dwarfed by what we do
today, but still a huge output
nevertheless.
&ow, those were all driven by renewable
energy, wind and water.
ow about engines?
&ow, we come into the point where we talk
about engines.
The first steam engine was a &ewcomen
;ngine, it"s a guy that invented a simple
steam engine designed solely to pump
water out of coal mines.
(t didn"t matter it was efficient,
inefficient, e$cuse me, because he just
shoveled in more coal, you"re right there
at the mine.
(t had a simple up and down motion.
%nd a very inefficient design, but still
it worked and pumped water out of the
mines.
Well, Watt came up with, and correctly,
it"s a Watt@)olton steam engine, they
were partners, but )olton seems to be
forgotten these days.
)ut Watt@)olton steam engine had a couple
of really big changes and advantages.
(t separated out the steam condenser from
the steam boiler.
So, you could do the hot things in one
place and the cold things in another
place.
That made it faster acting and much more
efficient.
They also developed a crank case and a
fly wheel to convert that up and down
motion to rotary motion.
&ow, you have what we know today as an
engine with rotary motion.
So, know you can do things like develop
mobile vehicles.
That was yet to come.
So, to summari7e this, an early working
laborer or even laborers today, about
1.1+, kilowatts output, an o$ about si$
times that or 1.9, kilowatts.
;arly wind power, 3., to 31.,.
;arly water power, 3., to /.* kilowatts,
and holy cow, now we"re off to the races.
&ew coming steam engine 3, kilowatts.
Watt@)olton 2, kilowatts.
% diesel engine, now we come into the
late 3*11"s.
%nd diesel comes up with a diesel engine
and it"s output is 31 kilowatts.
&ow, we got something going for us.
5et"s compare.
%n o$ is e.ual to about 0 workers.
That"s 1.9, #W divided by 1.+,.
That"s an o$ for an individual labor.
The largest early wind power devices
represent the output of about 391
laborers.
31 and a half kilowatts versus 1.1+,
kilowatts.
The Watt@)olton steam engine, holy cow,
/// people.
&ow, we"re really cooking.
)ut wait a minute.
We drive around in cars, many of us do.
Aor e$ample, a car with 3/9 horsepower
engine, that"s about 311 kilowatts.
(t"s e.uivalent to the output of over
3/11 individual laborers.
Think about that.
;very time you get, ( forgot my milk.
So, ( have to go back out to the grocery
store, a separate trip.
>et in my car and harness 3/11 laborers
to get me to that grocery store and back.
What an astounding level of progress.
We"ll see where it gets us in the ne$t
modules.