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How Much Power Is 1.21 Gigawatts, Anyway? The Science Behind Back to the Future (www.syfy.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Back to the Future's 1.21 gigawatts sounds huge, but is it? We compare different power levels of common objects to see how much energy a gigawatt really is.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

A 100-watt bulb is so named because it uses 100 watts of energy for every hour of operation.

This does not make sense. watt is not a unit of energy.

Neither does this:

We’re still nowhere close to a gigawatt, we’ll need 1,000 megawatts to get there. That’s enough electricity to keep the average American home powered up for 100 years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

For anyone curious energy is the ability to do work and power is how fast that work can be done. Power represented in watts is the relationship of units of energy per unit of time or 1 watt = 1 joule (energy unit or work that can be done) per second.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

When I read those things I always assume they're talking about megawatt hours.

Considering that the average american home consumes a little under 1000 kilowatt hours a month then the math starts to line up.

1000 KW hours is 1 megawatt hour. 1,000 megawatt hours is 1 gigawatt hour, so 1,000 months, while being a bit shy of 100 years, is still 83 years and change.