URMC Interpretive Engineering: A System‑Level Reformulation of Exergy and Consumability

Modern energy systems are increasingly limited not by thermodynamics, but by infrastructure: network bottlenecks , load mismatches , control limitations , and temporal desynchronization between generation and consumption. Traditional exergy analysis only captures irreversibility but fails to explain why a significant portion of available energy cannot be consumed at all . This paper proposes the Energy Consumability Framework , a formalization of a new system parameter, the energy consumption coefficient . α, which quantifies the share of available energy physically achievable for use. A rigorous decomposition of α into network, load, management , and time factors is introduced , allowing for the separation of unreachable exergy (energy unavailable due to system limitations ) from destroyed exergy (thermodynamic losses). The framework demonstrates that infrastructure constraints can override thermodynamic constraints , and that increasing α often yields a greater impact than improving equipment efficiency . The approach is applicable to grids with a high share of renewable energy sources, storage systems , grid infrastructure planning , and investment evaluation . The work proposes a new order of analysis: Available Energy → Consumability → Exergy → Efficiency , which makes it a fundamental addition to classical exergetics.