At this moment in the United States, there are nearly 50 million electric motors in service doing work and consuming energy. That’s just in the United States alone where they account for nearly 2/3rds of all United States energy consumption.
Worldwide electric motor power consumption is estimated to approach nearly 60% of the 16,000+ terawatt-hours of annual energy production. That’s a 16 with 15 zeros behind it—16,000,000,000,000,000 watt-hours! These numbers can seem nebulous and lose their meaning and consequence without seeing the zeros and, as a result, we have difficulty grasping the scope of the problems caused by inefficiency in power conversion.
The impact of improving the efficiency of electric motor power conversion by just one-half of one percent reduces global power consumption by a staggering 536 terawatt-hours annually!
How do we put a value on 536 terawatt-hours of energy savings and give ourselves some sort of perspective? California, the United States’ 4th largest producer of electric energy, for example, would be able to turn off all electric energy generating plants for 973 days, or 2.67 years!
Efficiency matters.