2 ms·
If they can't even get the units right in their title, it's hard to take the rest of it seriously. A watt is a unit of instantaneous power. A joule is a unit
by photochemsyn 4y ago
If they can't even get the units right in their title, it's hard to take the rest of it seriously.
A watt is a unit of instantaneous power. A joule is a unit of energy. A Tesla supercharger that delivers 100,000 watts can fully charge a 100 kilo-watt-hour capacity battery in one hour storing about 3.6 million joules.
At solar noon in the mid-latitudes, charging your average Tesla like this would take about 400 250-watt solar panels, (a 100 kilowatt system) running for one hour under full sun, which requires about a 25 * 25 meter surface area, or about 1/8th of a football field.
However, the total energy produced by a rated 100 kilowatt solar array over a 24-hour period is not 24 * 100, because earth spins. Hence, comparing a 100 kilowatt coal plant (running 24-7) to a 100 kW solar array (at noon)...
How many 100 kW solar arrays do you need to completely replace the output of a single 100 kW coal plant? Well, we need to integrate the solar power curve over time to get the energy under the curve which is the energy produced by the solar array, and we just have to multiply 100 * 24 to get it for the coal plant...
And that's why when you see companies reporting their green credentials in terms of 'rated renewable power' instead of actual energy produced you should be somewhat skeptical.