• beastlykings@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Wait wait Wait, can you give me more on this kWh thing? I thought I understood this already.

    A single kW is a unit of power, literally 1000 watts.

    A kWh is a unit of energy, as in stored or delivered. Draw 500 watts for 2 hours? That’s a kWh. Or have a battery that can hold 1 kWh, then assuming 100% efficiency you could draw 1000 watts from it for an hour before it was empty.

    All of this is kW times hour, I would say? But in my mind I would interchangeably say per hour as well, they feel the same.

    Obviously I’m wrong, but I’d like to know why lol

    • HerrBeter@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      If you use exactly 20 kW for an hour, it will translate to 20 kWh. But if your power usage varies over time, you can’t keep track of it so simple. It’s just how it is.

      The unit is really watt [W] and the Greek prefix kilo (k) for 1000. This way it’s fast and easy to convert to different scales (like Mega, Giga etc) for comparing numbers