EIA Calculates Electric Motors Efficiency by Industry
Daily Fusion, October 21, 2013Machine drives, which are primarily electric motors, pumps, and fans, account for about half of the manufacturing sector’s delivered electricity use and 8% of the sector’s total fuel consumption. Their wide use across many industries results in a substantial impact of electric motors efficiency on the demand placed on power grids.
EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2013 (AEO2013) projects that the continuing increase in the energy efficiency of machine drives offsets an increase in industrial output, resulting in relatively flat levels of electricity consumption by machine drives.
The level of electricity use in manufacturing or other activities has broader implications for total energy use. It takes three units of primary energy (from fuels such as coal, nuclear, and natural gas) to generate one unit of electricity, meaning that increased electricity use has a disproportionate effect on the amount of total primary energy required to support site-level energy use. Reported electricity use is based on energy consumption for end use (delivered energy).