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Why are you and the article using TWh/year? Why not just use watts? By my math... 15 TWh/year = 15000 GWh/year = 41 GWh/day = 1.7 Gwh/hour = 1.7 GW

Why are you and the article using TWh/year? Why not just use watts? By my math... 15 TWh/year = 15000 GWh/year = 41 GWh/day = 1.7 Gwh/hour = 1.7 GW Which is approximately one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_coulee_dam_aerial_2.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_coulee_dam_aerial_2...

kemiller 9y ago
Because energy is routinely priced by the watt-hour.
- aqme28 9y ago
  I'm still curious why it's priced by the watt-hour instead of the Joule
  - 6nf 9y ago
    It's easier for a consumer running a 100 watt appliance for 2 hours to calculate the cost.
  - badosu 9y ago
    Probably because power consumption of utilities are measured by watt, so watt/h gives more intuition on how much energy was consumed.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    I think because consumer devices are rated in watts, and consumers can easily guess how many hours they use a particular device.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    Without knowing anything specific about this, but knowing a lot about how the world works, I'm fairly confident this convention predates the wide acceptance of the Joule unit.
    - Someone 9y ago
      Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_and_Measures#CGPM_meetings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_..., the Watt and the Joule were formalized at the sa,e conference (in 1948). Of course, that doesn’t rule out that your claim is true, but it does make me wonder whether it does. I would guess kWh is used because it makes it easier for customers to verify that they aren’t scammed, given that appliances are tagged with Watts. I guess appliances are tagged with Watts and not Joule/s because it is easier to use a single unit than two.
      - BurningFrog 9y ago
        Yes, but note my "wide acceptance of" weasel phrase. My impression is that the Joule only started being used widely in the 70s. I did try to find out when it was defined but failed, so thanks for digging that fact up!
        Someone 9y ago
        There’s also https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Watt%2CJoule&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Watt%2CJoule&y.... That is for books and must cover mentions of both Watt’s and Joule’s name and of the unit (and, likely, way more of the names. The units typically are abbreviated), so I don’t think that proves or disproves much about wide use of the units. The difference before 1860 probably is there because James Prescott Joule was less than a year old when James Watt died in 1819 (at the age of 83) Edit: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kJ%2CkWh%2Ccalorie&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kJ%2CkWh%2Ccal... seems to support the claim that “Joule” came up relatively late.
mrb 9y ago
I use both. In fact I convert to various other units in my summary (watts, TWh/yr, Mtoe/yr, etc) to make it easy to compare to other energy figures.
Banderly 9y ago
Or put another way, approximately enough to power 110 of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight, that would give a combined performance of 10 exaFLOPS. https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1 https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1 Given bitcoin's current throughput that's about 1 exaFLOP equivalent per bitcoin transaction. There is no wealth being created here, merely a lot of wealth being rapidly redistributed with a great proportion of that literally turned into heat. This will not end well.
- Itsdijital 9y ago
  Although I'm a bit of a biased (dumped btc) hypocrite (made good money from it), bitcoin kinda needs to die. There are vastly superior alternatives that improve on btc in pretty much every way. Bitcoin has got the name though, so people keep buying it.
- runeks 9y ago
  > Given bitcoin's current throughput that's about 1 exaFLOP equivalent per bitcoin transaction. A block adds an extra confirmation to all transactions in the chain, not just those in the given block. The goal is to make the entire chain as difficult to alter as possible, and each added block increases that difficulty.
zaarn 9y ago
TWh/year makes sense if you want to talk about the entire energy consumption over a year. 1.7GW lacks a time frame, 15TWh/year is more useful in that context, even if you can just short it down to 1.7GW.
icelancer 9y ago
watt-hours are the standard measure of electricity use over time; your electrical bill almost certainly uses it (KWh).

kemiller 9y ago

Because energy is routinely priced by the watt-hour.

aqme28 9y ago
I'm still curious why it's priced by the watt-hour instead of the Joule
- 6nf 9y ago
  It's easier for a consumer running a 100 watt appliance for 2 hours to calculate the cost.
- badosu 9y ago
  Probably because power consumption of utilities are measured by watt, so watt/h gives more intuition on how much energy was consumed.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  I think because consumer devices are rated in watts, and consumers can easily guess how many hours they use a particular device.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  Without knowing anything specific about this, but knowing a lot about how the world works, I'm fairly confident this convention predates the wide acceptance of the Joule unit.
  - Someone 9y ago
    Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_and_Measures#CGPM_meetings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Conference_on_Weights_..., the Watt and the Joule were formalized at the sa,e conference (in 1948). Of course, that doesn’t rule out that your claim is true, but it does make me wonder whether it does. I would guess kWh is used because it makes it easier for customers to verify that they aren’t scammed, given that appliances are tagged with Watts. I guess appliances are tagged with Watts and not Joule/s because it is easier to use a single unit than two.
    - BurningFrog 9y ago
      Yes, but note my "wide acceptance of" weasel phrase. My impression is that the Joule only started being used widely in the 70s. I did try to find out when it was defined but failed, so thanks for digging that fact up!
      - Someone 9y ago
        There’s also https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Watt%2CJoule&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Watt%2CJoule&y.... That is for books and must cover mentions of both Watt’s and Joule’s name and of the unit (and, likely, way more of the names. The units typically are abbreviated), so I don’t think that proves or disproves much about wide use of the units. The difference before 1860 probably is there because James Prescott Joule was less than a year old when James Watt died in 1819 (at the age of 83) Edit: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kJ%2CkWh%2Ccalorie&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kJ%2CkWh%2Ccal... seems to support the claim that “Joule” came up relatively late.

mrb 9y ago

I use both. In fact I convert to various other units in my summary (watts, TWh/yr, Mtoe/yr, etc) to make it easy to compare to other energy figures.

Banderly 9y ago

Or put another way, approximately enough to power 110 of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight, that would give a combined performance of 10 exaFLOPS. https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1 https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=1 Given bitcoin's current throughput that's about 1 exaFLOP equivalent per bitcoin transaction. There is no wealth being created here, merely a lot of wealth being rapidly redistributed with a great proportion of that literally turned into heat. This will not end well.

Itsdijital 9y ago
Although I'm a bit of a biased (dumped btc) hypocrite (made good money from it), bitcoin kinda needs to die. There are vastly superior alternatives that improve on btc in pretty much every way. Bitcoin has got the name though, so people keep buying it.
runeks 9y ago
> Given bitcoin's current throughput that's about 1 exaFLOP equivalent per bitcoin transaction. A block adds an extra confirmation to all transactions in the chain, not just those in the given block. The goal is to make the entire chain as difficult to alter as possible, and each added block increases that difficulty.

zaarn 9y ago

TWh/year makes sense if you want to talk about the entire energy consumption over a year. 1.7GW lacks a time frame, 15TWh/year is more useful in that context, even if you can just short it down to 1.7GW.

icelancer 9y ago

watt-hours are the standard measure of electricity use over time; your electrical bill almost certainly uses it (KWh).