Typically the amount of water consumed during power generation is much greater when the power is generated at centralized power plants, as opposed to on-site with renewable power production such as rooftop solar, whose water consumption is negligible.
Introducing a Watergy Cost Calculator for You and Your Community
How much water is expended in the generation of electricity from different sources?
How much energy, and subsequently embedded water, do average U.S. and Arizona households use per month, depending on where their energy comes from?
How about you and your community?
Use this one-page Community Watergy Calculator (PDF version – non-interactive) or Community Watergy Calculator (Excel version – interactive) to find out.
Click the image for a larger size.
The Watergy Cost Calculator. Notice how a Tucson, Arizona, household consumes 558 gallons of water per month via its electricity consumption if it gets its power from coal (the primary source of electricity in Tucson), but consumes only 1 gallon of water per month via its electricity consumption if it gets its power from rooftop solar. Now let’s go up in scale. Notice how all Tucson households combined consume 112,161,890 gallons of water per month via their combined electrical consumption if they get their power from coal, but they would consume only 219,925 gallons of water per month via their combined electrical consumption if they were to get their power from rooftop solar. In the Excel version of the spreadsheet, you can enter the number of households in your community to generate ballpark numbers for how much water your community consumes through its power generation.
