Units of power conversion.

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I know some conversions 360 Joules = 1 watt hour etc, and I can see why units are changed so we can have a reasonable number and or understand what it means, but what is 3.4 million homes in mega watt? Last two power stations I worked on the build of was 1500 MW and 1600 MW first had two generators the second four generators.

The internet hunt says 650 homes per MW so around 5230 MW so around 3.5 nuclear power stations, that is a lot of off shore wind power.

1.5 kW average does seem reasonable per home. Until you consider heating, then it jumps, so if we any phasing out fossil fuels then the average for a home must include heating, and then 1.5 kW seem very low.
 
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I'm not quite sure what you are asking :)

But to answer the question I think you are asking..... have you found the GridWatch site ? https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

This details the UK consumption & generation. Currently the UK loading is around 34 GW of which around 28% is coming from Wind & 36% from combined cycle gas turbine.
 
It was a BBC report which talks about a new wind farm, but refers to size as 3.4 million homes rather than Mega Watt output. It says enough power for 3.4 million homes, not enough electrical power for 3.4 million homes.

At approx 10 kWh per litre and 600 litres per year so average per year around 700 watt. So for the total for a home to be 1.5 kW seems a little low, specially if you include things like electric vehicle charging.

So 3.4 million homes seems a rather poor way to explain the size of a power installation.
 
I know some conversions 360 Joules = 1 watt hour etc,

Since
1 Watt = 1 Joule per Second
and there are 60 * 60 = 3600 Seconds in 1 hour
1 Watt Hour = 3600 Joules.

You later wrote
At approx 10 kWh per litre and 600 litres per year so average per year around 700 watt.
What do you mean by "10 kWh per litre"?

To raise the temperature of 1 ml of water by 1˚C one calorie is required, which is 4.184 Joules.
Hence, to raise 1 litre of water from "room temperature" (say, 20 ˚C) to "boiling point" (100 ˚C)
requires 4.184 * 80 * 1000 = 334720 Joules,
which is 334720 / 3600 = 92.98 Watt Hours - ignoring heat losses.
(Say, 100 Wh or 0.1 kWh)
 
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What do you mean by "10 kWh per litre"?
I agree that eric's posts were rather confusing and his question(s) unclear. However, in relation to the above I can but presume that he was talking about electricity generation from oil, where 10 kWh per litre of oil consumed is, I think, roughly in the right ball park.

Kind Regards, John
 
Yes that was my thoughts @JohnW2 a home can be anything from a mansion to a caravan, so near impossible to guess average energy used, remember it does not say electrical power, just power, so would include gas and oil. And of course the home could have one to ten people living there, who may use public transport or private, and if private it could be charged from the homes supply.

It just seems completely daft to take about 3.4 million homes rather than how many MW.
 
Yes that was my thoughts @JohnW2 a home can be anything from a mansion to a caravan, so near impossible to guess average energy used ....
There's no need to guess - they just determine the total usage of a large number of homes and divide by the number of homes - the DNO have that information, and that's how they calculate average usage.
.... remember it does not say electrical power, just power, so would include gas and oil.
It does say that, and I suppose it's a bit ambiguous - but I think one has to apply some common sense in interpreting what they write. Given the context (a proposed new electricity-generating wind farm) I can but presume that they are talking about the current electricity usage (regardless of usage of other fuels) of 3.4 million homes. I cannot believe that they are talking about how much electricity the homes would use if they abandoned their use of gas and oil and changed everything to electricity.
And of course the home could have one to ten people living there, who may use public transport or private, and if private it could be charged from the homes supply.
An average is an average - and, in practice the vast majority of the 3.4 million homes they talk about will be (if I am allowed the 'pun') "average homes" - so the overall average will be very close to the average usage of "average homes".
It just seems completely daft to take about 3.4 million homes rather than how many MW.
Daft in relation to what purpose? If the purpose is to communicate information to the general public (it is, after all, the BBC!) then I would suggest that "3.4 million homes" will surely mean far more to most members of the general public than would "XYZ MW", wouldn't it?

Kind Regards, John
 
Without additional information and a few quick calculations I think I’d struggle really to compute what say 2000MW means in terms of generating capacity when quoted in a news report. Is it 1% or is it 80% of the required capacity, and I imagine the layman even less so. I don’t know off the top of my head how many MW is used in the UK.

Quoting this same capacity as 3 million houses is much easier to understand. It is at a guess enough to power my county, so easy to quantify as “quite a lot” with out any additional information or calculations needed which is all that really needs to be conveyed in a brief news article.
 

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