Dear Pat,
Note that Stan wrote:
Notice that I am using the unit watt (W) here and throughout the treatise. That
unit is both familiar and shorter than others that one could select to express
the annual average energy usage.
Rather than reporting on the amounts of energy used annually, he
reported on the average rate of energy use, that average being taken
over a year's span. The wording of that could have been a bit more clear
to make that point, I suppose.
Stan's approach is laudable. One hears of electrical power plants,
various generators (diesel, wind, PV etc.) in terms of their rated power
production. This makes it easier to "add up" those numbers for
comparison. One never hears of the amount of energy produced each year
by the neighboring power plant, just its power rating or average power
output over some period.
Jim
Pat Naughtin wrote:
Dear Stan,
It seems really odd to me that engineers, who probably know much better,
are using a power unit when they are referring to energy.
As far as I know power and energy were clearly distinguished as two
quite separate and distinct physical realities late in the 1700s or
early in the 1800s (I would like to have an exact date but this is the
best I can do at present).
As you know the unit for energy in the International System of Units
(SI) is the joule (symbol J) and the unit for power in SI is the watt
(symbol W). It makes no sense at all to me to pretend you are talking
about energy when you are trying to describe it with the SI unit for power.
You will recall that I am really concerned about this issue because
until journalists and politicians are able to comprehend the nature of
energy and how to measure it, we have no chance that they might begin to
comprehend issues such as 'global warming', 'climate change', or 'the
end of oil' as these are, in essence energy issues, and not power issues.
My approach is to use the SI unit, joule, only, and to use it with an
appropriate prefix to give whole number amounts. See the short article
at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/AWordAboutGlobalWarming.pdf
for an example of how I use the energy unit, joule.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
On 2010/06/07, at 10:17 , Stanislav Jakuba wrote:
I am attaching an energy article that is distinguished for using only
one unit, the watt (W), throughout. That units was selected as it is
both familiar everywhere, incl. in the US, and shorter than others
that one could select to express the average energy usage. The watt
(as GW) is the only unit need for these kinds of global statistics,
and using it exclusively enables immediate comparisons.
I do not mean to start a debate about the opinions expressed in the
treatise, although I will certainly read all. Instead, I do hope to
"persuade" everybody in the energy business to settle on this unit for
any kind of energy usage, i.e.power, anywhere in the world instead of
the plethora of units common in energy related statistics. On the
scale of countries, only one prefix also, the G, suffices.
Stan Jakuba
<Pacific Gas & E.3USMA.doc>
Pat Naughtin
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