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Can we please ban from humanity any journalist that writes "will be able to power X homes" ... Just give GW, it would be enough If you want to put to scale use

Can we please ban from humanity any journalist that writes "will be able to power X homes" ... Just give GW, it would be enough If you want to put to scale use something else (will provide the output of 1/2 hoover dams, will be able to supply 0.1% of US electricity or power 5000000 tumble dryers or 3 ATI cards) Homes just don't need electricity to exist ...

3stripe 11y ago
The fact that I have no idea what GW means might give you a clue why journalists do this.
- nandemo 11y ago
  GW=gigawatt.
  - jenscow 11y ago
    what the hell is a jigawatt?
    - AtlasLion 11y ago
      This is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frIA7tuBqqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frIA7tuBqqY
stingraycharles 11y ago
To be fair, they provided both metrics. I think when you say "500 megawatt" to the average person, they have no idea how much that exactly is. When you say "500,000 houses", they do, even if it might be somewhat inaccurate.
- JorgeGT 11y ago
  The problem is that home energy consumption varies wildly across the world, even orders of magnitude. I would use "power to light X soccer fields" or something like that which is more or less global.
  - stingraycharles 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure that would confuse people even more; i have no idea how much electricity a soccer field uses on a monthly basis. Can't we just get over it and accept that the only thing people generally have a good idea about is the power consumption of their own household, and as such using home energy consumption is what journalists have settled on? It's really the most pragmatic, and is only problematic when they're not providing the GW value.
    - JorgeGT 11y ago
      Out of curiosity, what is the power consumption of your household?
      - jstanley 11y ago
        It is 1 household's worth of power consumption. The point he was making is that he doesn't know the exact number, but he knows how many household's worth it is.
        mikeash 11y ago
        That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Households don't consume identical amounts of power. When an article discusses powering large numbers like this, it's using an average. If you don't know how much power your own house uses then you don't know how you compare to the average. As for knowing or not knowing the exact number, do people not read their electric bills?
- ithkuil 11y ago
  I think that the average person cannot really picture 500,000 houses; big numbers are hard. Percentages are easier. This plant delivers 500 megawatt of power, which is 15% of the biggest nuclear powerplant of the US (or 7% of the biggest hydroelectric power plant of the US, or 2% of the world's biggest power plant, the Three Gorges Dam in China). This helps putting in perspective the size of the plant in terms of what other endeavours of that kind offer and helps cope with the fact that the average person has no idea how many plants there are in the world and so how to relate the 500,000 houses number to the importance a given project might have.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    The average person can absolutely picture 500,000 homes. If I live in a city of 2 million then it's one quarter of the size. I can visualise this quite easily. And if you think the average person is going to find percentages of some arbitrary landmark then I don't think you understand the average person.
    - arrrg 11y ago
      There are 2.7 people in the average US household. If homes are equivalent to households (I don’t know how they are defined – I think they might be identical) then this power plant can power two thirds of your city (presumably minus all the infrastructure needed to run all the rest of the city, everything from offices to shopping malls to street lights – I don’t even know what the relation of residential use to all other use is nor would I be super keen on guessing), not just a quarter. Still, I do agree that it’s easier to visualize with the number of households attached, inaccuracies be damned (at least if you do both). PS: Interesting tidbit I just found out while doing some quick googling on this: Apparently the average US household consumes more electricity per month (more than 900 kWh) than I do in a whole year (roughly 800 kWh).
    - lumpypua 11y ago
      > The average person can absolutely picture 500,000 homes. If I live in a city of 2 million then it's one quarter of the size. Think about this really hard.
trengrj 11y ago
Agree that the power required for a home is variable and so it is a more complex measure but I think that something that can "power 1 million homes" means more to the average person in a measurable way than "XYZ GW".
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  It's true "power 1 million homes" fuzzy unit, but it's actually what lay people and policy makers want to know in the end. Also true what it takes to power homes varies a lot. I remember kayaking down the Colorado river. First day was hot and the Hoover dam upstream was running it's generators full tilt to power all the air conditioners in Vegas. River was kinda scary. Next day weather moved in and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. Air conditioners off, generators off. Now flow and the river was still with wind blowing upstream and we had to paddle all the way out for 8 miles.
nnethercote 11y ago
"... enough electricity to power the lights in 1400 Libraries of Congress?" :P
- wiredfool 11y ago
  "...a little less than half a Delorean"
TeMPOraL 11y ago
To those replying that people don't know what GWs are - it's pretty sad, really. One would hope that in the XXI century, especially in a technological civilization of the west, every self-respecting human would know what a watt is. As it is now, even journalists don't expect anything from their audience anymore. If you look at the economics of journalism, it's understandable why they write this way (the economics view explains most of the ways modern journalism is crap), but it's disheartening that nobody minds writing about "calories" (which should be kcal), or "horsepower", but watts need a "X homes" explanation.
- adrianN 11y ago
  I know what a Watt is and I understand the Giga-prefix. I still like an analogy with my GW numbers, because in my daily life I don't encounter these things very often and have a hard time imagining how much that exactly is. I would have to Google some other representative values, like the output of a typical coal plant to get an idea what the number means. This is not the case with calories (I know that what I eat daily has about 2500 of those) or horsepower (I know that my car used to have 60).
  - tajen 11y ago
    Once nuclear core = a bit less than 1GW. France has 58 of them, producing 74% of its electricity. In total France produces 63GW, with 70Mhab = about 1KW per inhabitant in average.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  Right now 95% of Journalists and politicians don't know what a Watt is - which is sad. Maybe we need to have all BSC/Technical short lists for MP's to rebalance the HOC away from lawyers and carear politicians.
- benihana 11y ago
  I know what a watt is, and I understand what giga means. I know what a calorie means because I eat food and I have to make decisions about how many calories to consume daily. I know what horsepower means because when I shop for cars, I compare them to one another. I don't know what gigawatt means because I don't shop for power, I don't compare power output of one reactor to another, and I don't worry about power consumption because it's all covered by my wall outlets. I don't know why you're getting uppity about this specific unit, but your post reeks of elitism and arrogance. You happen to understand what a watt is, so it's disheartening and sad that nobody else does (it's so lonely being so smart and being surrounded by dumb people)? Keep your shitty judgmental attitude to yourself.

3stripe 11y ago

The fact that I have no idea what GW means might give you a clue why journalists do this.

nandemo 11y ago
GW=gigawatt.
- jenscow 11y ago
  what the hell is a jigawatt?
  - AtlasLion 11y ago
    This is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frIA7tuBqqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frIA7tuBqqY

stingraycharles 11y ago

To be fair, they provided both metrics. I think when you say "500 megawatt" to the average person, they have no idea how much that exactly is. When you say "500,000 houses", they do, even if it might be somewhat inaccurate.

JorgeGT 11y ago
The problem is that home energy consumption varies wildly across the world, even orders of magnitude. I would use "power to light X soccer fields" or something like that which is more or less global.
- stingraycharles 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure that would confuse people even more; i have no idea how much electricity a soccer field uses on a monthly basis. Can't we just get over it and accept that the only thing people generally have a good idea about is the power consumption of their own household, and as such using home energy consumption is what journalists have settled on? It's really the most pragmatic, and is only problematic when they're not providing the GW value.
  - JorgeGT 11y ago
    Out of curiosity, what is the power consumption of your household?
    - jstanley 11y ago
      It is 1 household's worth of power consumption. The point he was making is that he doesn't know the exact number, but he knows how many household's worth it is.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Households don't consume identical amounts of power. When an article discusses powering large numbers like this, it's using an average. If you don't know how much power your own house uses then you don't know how you compare to the average. As for knowing or not knowing the exact number, do people not read their electric bills?
ithkuil 11y ago
I think that the average person cannot really picture 500,000 houses; big numbers are hard. Percentages are easier. This plant delivers 500 megawatt of power, which is 15% of the biggest nuclear powerplant of the US (or 7% of the biggest hydroelectric power plant of the US, or 2% of the world's biggest power plant, the Three Gorges Dam in China). This helps putting in perspective the size of the plant in terms of what other endeavours of that kind offer and helps cope with the fact that the average person has no idea how many plants there are in the world and so how to relate the 500,000 houses number to the importance a given project might have.
- threeseed 11y ago
  The average person can absolutely picture 500,000 homes. If I live in a city of 2 million then it's one quarter of the size. I can visualise this quite easily. And if you think the average person is going to find percentages of some arbitrary landmark then I don't think you understand the average person.
  - arrrg 11y ago
    There are 2.7 people in the average US household. If homes are equivalent to households (I don’t know how they are defined – I think they might be identical) then this power plant can power two thirds of your city (presumably minus all the infrastructure needed to run all the rest of the city, everything from offices to shopping malls to street lights – I don’t even know what the relation of residential use to all other use is nor would I be super keen on guessing), not just a quarter. Still, I do agree that it’s easier to visualize with the number of households attached, inaccuracies be damned (at least if you do both). PS: Interesting tidbit I just found out while doing some quick googling on this: Apparently the average US household consumes more electricity per month (more than 900 kWh) than I do in a whole year (roughly 800 kWh).
  - lumpypua 11y ago
    > The average person can absolutely picture 500,000 homes. If I live in a city of 2 million then it's one quarter of the size. Think about this really hard.

trengrj 11y ago

Agree that the power required for a home is variable and so it is a more complex measure but I think that something that can "power 1 million homes" means more to the average person in a measurable way than "XYZ GW".

Gibbon1 11y ago
It's true "power 1 million homes" fuzzy unit, but it's actually what lay people and policy makers want to know in the end. Also true what it takes to power homes varies a lot. I remember kayaking down the Colorado river. First day was hot and the Hoover dam upstream was running it's generators full tilt to power all the air conditioners in Vegas. River was kinda scary. Next day weather moved in and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. Air conditioners off, generators off. Now flow and the river was still with wind blowing upstream and we had to paddle all the way out for 8 miles.

nnethercote 11y ago

"... enough electricity to power the lights in 1400 Libraries of Congress?" :P

wiredfool 11y ago
"...a little less than half a Delorean"

TeMPOraL 11y ago

To those replying that people don't know what GWs are - it's pretty sad, really. One would hope that in the XXI century, especially in a technological civilization of the west, every self-respecting human would know what a watt is. As it is now, even journalists don't expect anything from their audience anymore. If you look at the economics of journalism, it's understandable why they write this way (the economics view explains most of the ways modern journalism is crap), but it's disheartening that nobody minds writing about "calories" (which should be kcal), or "horsepower", but watts need a "X homes" explanation.

adrianN 11y ago
I know what a Watt is and I understand the Giga-prefix. I still like an analogy with my GW numbers, because in my daily life I don't encounter these things very often and have a hard time imagining how much that exactly is. I would have to Google some other representative values, like the output of a typical coal plant to get an idea what the number means. This is not the case with calories (I know that what I eat daily has about 2500 of those) or horsepower (I know that my car used to have 60).
- tajen 11y ago
  Once nuclear core = a bit less than 1GW. France has 58 of them, producing 74% of its electricity. In total France produces 63GW, with 70Mhab = about 1KW per inhabitant in average.
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
Right now 95% of Journalists and politicians don't know what a Watt is - which is sad. Maybe we need to have all BSC/Technical short lists for MP's to rebalance the HOC away from lawyers and carear politicians.
benihana 11y ago
I know what a watt is, and I understand what giga means. I know what a calorie means because I eat food and I have to make decisions about how many calories to consume daily. I know what horsepower means because when I shop for cars, I compare them to one another. I don't know what gigawatt means because I don't shop for power, I don't compare power output of one reactor to another, and I don't worry about power consumption because it's all covered by my wall outlets. I don't know why you're getting uppity about this specific unit, but your post reeks of elitism and arrogance. You happen to understand what a watt is, so it's disheartening and sad that nobody else does (it's so lonely being so smart and being surrounded by dumb people)? Keep your shitty judgmental attitude to yourself.