MATH 114 Project 2 - Ever wonder how your electricity bill is computed

MATH 114

Project 2 Instructions

Ever wonder how your electricity bill is computed? The following table gives the watts of power that are typically required by several major (and not so major) appliances. (Source: http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-information/how-to-save-energy/power-table, with some numbers rounded off for computational convenience.)

Table 1:

Assume that the number of hours that the aforementioned appliances run during an average day is given in the table below:

Table 2:

Add columns to the Project 2 Data spreadsheet that show the following for each appliance:

1. The number of kilowatts of power required by each of these appliances (1 kilowatt = 1000 watts).

2. If the appliance runs the number of hours specified in Table 2, compute the kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy that each appliance consumes during an average day. Note: kWh are found by multiplying the power of an appliance by the number of hours that it is in use.

3. The number of kilowatt-hours used by each appliance in the entire YEAR.

4. Assuming that electricity costs $0.13 per kWh, find the electricity cost of running each appliance for the entire year.

5. According to the US Energy Information Administration (see “How much coal, natural gas or petroleum is used to generate a kilowatt-hour of electricity” on https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/), it requires 0.00052 tons of coal to generate 1 kWh of electricity. Use this conversion to find how much coal would be required to run each of these appliances for a year.

6. The same source also states that 0.00173 barrels of oil will generate 1 kWh of electricity. Like question 5, find how much oil each appliance would consume on an annual basis.

7. Add a “Total” row to the spreadsheet that shows how much electricity is consumed by all 8 appliances combined in the course of a day and of a year. Also, find the cost, the amount of coal that would be required, and the barrels of oil that would be required in order to run all 8 appliances for a year.

Sheet1