3 ms·

For energy: - if it's a bad thing, e.g. nuclear power, it's "megawatts" or "gigawatts" - if it's a good thing, it's "powering N homes"

sebazzz 4y ago
Although double deckers, fingers or hairs are not going to change much in size - the power requirements of a home is increasing significantly as we gravitate more away from gas towards heat pumps and electric cars.
- gumby 4y ago
  > the power requirements of a home is increasing significantly as we gravitate more away from gas towards heat pumps and electric cars. That's not true at all. Usage recorded by the electricity meter will go up, yes, but usage recorded at the gas meter will go down. And net, the newer approaches use less power than the older ones. The one technical exception is the car, whose power requirement was previously not captured by the home's consumption. But including that, on a household basis power consumption should drop.
- martopix 4y ago
  Correct for the exact opposite reason. Our homes use less and less power as better insulation becomes widespread. Italy for example just had a massive campaign of incentives for people to renovate their homes to better power saving.
kergonath 4y ago
I’ve seen that changing in the good way over time. Journalists used to have no clue about the difference between a megawatt and a kilojoule (some still don’t), but these days they are not afraid of discussing gigawatts and terawatt-hours in mainstream media.
- EntrePrescott 4y ago
  Indeed, it's bad enough when they mix up units of the same dimension, but ignoring different dimensions is even more stupid (though it has the advantage of being more easily detectable without even having to check the numbers). In that vein, a common mistake is to mix up multiplication with division, e.g. when they write "terawatt per hour" instead of "terawatt hour" for energy or "kmh" instead of "km/h" for speed.
version_five 4y ago
Those are units of power I've occasionally seen energy measured in "fully loaded 747s coming in to land"

sebazzz 4y ago

Although double deckers, fingers or hairs are not going to change much in size - the power requirements of a home is increasing significantly as we gravitate more away from gas towards heat pumps and electric cars.

gumby 4y ago
> the power requirements of a home is increasing significantly as we gravitate more away from gas towards heat pumps and electric cars. That's not true at all. Usage recorded by the electricity meter will go up, yes, but usage recorded at the gas meter will go down. And net, the newer approaches use less power than the older ones. The one technical exception is the car, whose power requirement was previously not captured by the home's consumption. But including that, on a household basis power consumption should drop.
martopix 4y ago
Correct for the exact opposite reason. Our homes use less and less power as better insulation becomes widespread. Italy for example just had a massive campaign of incentives for people to renovate their homes to better power saving.

kergonath 4y ago

I’ve seen that changing in the good way over time. Journalists used to have no clue about the difference between a megawatt and a kilojoule (some still don’t), but these days they are not afraid of discussing gigawatts and terawatt-hours in mainstream media.

EntrePrescott 4y ago
Indeed, it's bad enough when they mix up units of the same dimension, but ignoring different dimensions is even more stupid (though it has the advantage of being more easily detectable without even having to check the numbers). In that vein, a common mistake is to mix up multiplication with division, e.g. when they write "terawatt per hour" instead of "terawatt hour" for energy or "kmh" instead of "km/h" for speed.

version_five 4y ago

Those are units of power I've occasionally seen energy measured in "fully loaded 747s coming in to land"