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Incredible progress on solar power (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 days ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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[–] NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Terrawatt hours (per year, I assume?) is a strange way to express power usage. It's like saying "my girlfriend lives only 60 km/h minutes away" instead of "1 km away".

And the value is equivalent to 2.74 gigawatts of continuous power output. Which is way too low to be right.

But it's what I'm finding online too. It's like nobody understands what the units mean and they only care about relative changes over time.

I did find the statement that "the total global electricity [generation] capacity in 2022 was nearly 8.9 terawatt (TW)", which makes more sense.

[–] eronth@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

So, you're right, but there is kind of a difference. Watts measure energy rate at an instantaneous moment, but watt-hours (or commonly kilowatt hours) measures that rate over a timeframe. Yes you're back to joules, but its because they're specifically relating it back to watts, it ends up a more useful unit to be in kW and kWh instead of J and kW or something like that.