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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Most of us aren't used to "terrawatts" though. Is that like one Earth worth of watts? One watt as measured on Earth? The definition of watt culturally accepted by Earthlings?
You wouldn't find a terawatt in everyday usage, but a terawatt-hour is pretty commonplace when talking about the energy usage of entire populations.
This Reuters article states US power demand will climb to "4,027 billion kWh in 2022." Yeah, just say 4 PWh. Or even 4,027 TWh. It's a little more easily digested.
It's already an incomprehensably high number. No matter which way you state it is going to fly over peoples heads.
And the entire electricity consumption of the planet is something like 25.5 petawatt-houts.
They say it like that because people are used to being billed in kWh so it gives them a reference.
I think theperson you're replying to was making a joke off the misspelling of "terrawatts" in OP.
Oh that's super interesting and I did not know that, but I was riffing off the double R in "terrawatt," instead of "terawatt."
Like "tera" describes an order of magnitude, but "terra" means "earth," as in "terra firma," "terra nova," or "terran."
So I guess you could say that 25.5 petawatt-hours = 25,500 terawatt-hours = 1 terrawatt-hour.