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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

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.

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.