Chapter 18, Problem 30RQ

A sample of the data provided in the Microsoft Excel file EnergyData.xlsx online follows. The file contains energy consumption data by energy source per year in the United States, measured in petaBTUs.

a.    Write the MATLAB code necessary to read the Microsoft Excel file and store each column of data into different variables. Create the following:

• Yr: A vector of all of the years in the worksheet.
• FF: A vector of all of the fossil fuels for each year in Yr.
• ENI: A vector of all electric imports for each year in Yr.
• Nuc: A vector of all nuclear energy consumption for each year in Yr.
• Ren: A vector of all renewable energy consumption for each year in Yr.
• Hdr: A cell array of all of the headers in row 1.

You may not hard-code these variables—they should be imported from the Excel file.

b.    Create a new variable. Totalconsumption, which contains the sum of the four columns of energy consumption data for each year. In other words, since all five of the vectors (Yr, FF, ENI, Nuc, and Ren) we created in part (a) have the same length, the new variable, Totalconsumption, should have the same length. You may assume that you have correctly defined the variables in part (a).

c.    Calculate the average fossil fuel consumption in the entire data set. For this code, you may assume that you have correctly defined FF, the variable containing the fossil fuel consumption data, in part (a). Display the result of the calculation in the following format, where the number is shown to two decimal places:

The average fossil fuel consumption is _____ petaBTU.