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RE: Power usage
By jimpaka on 2/4/2009 3:38:39 PM , Rating: 3
Finally - thank you. It's shocking that so few people understand the difference between a Watt and a Watt hour.

"1 Watt" is a RATE of energy consumption (1 Joule per second), not an AMOUNT of energy. An AMOUNT of energy can be stated in Joules (Watt seconds) or as is more common, Watt hours (Wh), KiloWatt hours (KWh), MegaWatt hours (MWh) and so on.

As masher pointed out, MegaWatts per year does not make sense in this context. MegaWatt hours per year does make sense when describing how much energy a particular system is using. You can describe the same thing by simply stating that the system uses X MegaWatts.

Also, shame on the author of the article for getting this wrong.

