2 ms·
I wish I could get all journalists into one room for a couple of hours and teach them the difference between energy and power, and what a watt and a watt-hour a
by ScottBurson 11y ago
I wish I could get all journalists into one room for a couple of hours and teach them the difference between energy and power, and what a watt and a watt-hour are.
In most of this article we have "storage capacity" being reported in GW. In the last paragraph, though, the article switches without explanation to MWh. <facepalm>
In fact, we want both numbers: instantaneous power capability in (some multiple of) watts, and storage capacity in (some multiple of) watt-hours. These are different numbers, just as the HP rating of the engine in your car and the size of its gas tank are different numbers.
I suspect people would be less confused if we used joules instead of watt-hours for energy, and then reported power in joules per second. Yes, 1W = 1J/s, but that's the thing: intuitively people expect the base unit to be an amount, not a rate. Then instead of "1.3GW", an article like this would say "1.3GJ/s", and it would be (relatively) obvious that that's a rate of power delivery, not a storage capacity. Or instead of "65MWh" it would say "234GJ" (the conversion factor is 3600, there being 3600 seconds in an hour).
Oh well. I know I'm preaching to the choir here on HN. Just had to rant a little :-)