Power: The Rate of Energy Conversion
Often we’re interested not just in the total amount of energy converted in some
process, but also in the rate at which that energy is converted. A person consumes
2500 kilocalories per day; a furnace puts out 100,000 Btu per hour ; a power plant
generates one billion joules per second. To calculate the rate of energy
conversion,
all you have to do is divide the amount of energy converted by the amount of time
it took. Scientists use the term power for this ratio:
power =
energy
time (definition of power). (1.6)
For instance, if in climbing a flight of stairs you gain 2000 joules of
gravitational
energy over a period of 5 seconds, we would say that the power output of your legs
is
power =
2000 J
5 s = 400 J/s. (1.7)
(Since you are not 100% efficient at converting chemical energy into gravitational
energy, the rate at which your muscles consume chemical energy is actually greater;
Chapter 1 What is Energy? 7
the rest of the chemical energy gets converted to thermal energy, as you’ve
probably
noticed while exercising.)
The joule per second (J/s) is the official scientific unit of power, and has its
own
name: the watt (W). Thus, we could just as well say that the power output of your
legs in climbing the stairs is 400 watts. Since a watt is a rather small amount of
power (very roughly the rate at which a flashlight bulb converts electrical energy
into thermal and radiant energy), we often attach to it the prefixes kilo (for a
thousand), mega (for a million), or giga (for a billion). A typical American home
consumes electrical energy at an average rate of about a kilowatt (1 kW = 1000 J/s
= 103 J/s); a large truck consumes chemical energy (diesel fuel) at a rate of about
a megawatt (1 MW = 1,000,000 J/s = 106 J/s); and a large power plant generates
electricity at a rate of about a gigawatt (1 GW = 1,000,000,000 J/s = 109 J/s).
Another unit of power that you’ve probably heard of is the horsepower,
approximately the power output of a draft horse working steadily. Since all horses
are
not created equal, today the horsepower is defined as exactly 746 watts; whether
your horse can actually produce one horsepower is your own problem. Other units
of power can be created by combining any unit of energy with any unit of time,
as in Btu/hr (used for heating and cooling appliances) or kcal/day (convenient for
talking about the human diet).
If you know the power involved in some process and want to calculate the total
energy, you have to multiply by the time elapsed:
energy = (power) × (time). (1.8)
This is just an algebraic rearrangement of equation 1.6. For instance, if you leave
a
1000-watt electric heater running all day long, its total energy consumption is
energy = (1000 J/ s ) × (24 hours) ×
3600 s
1 hr
= 86, 400, 000 J, (1.9)
more than 86 megajoules. If you convert this number to kilowatt-hours, you’ll find
that it’s exactly 24 kWh. This is because the kilowatt-hour is defined to equal a
kilowatt multiplied by an hour:
1 kWh = (1 kilowatt) × (1 hour) = (1000 J/ s ) × (3600 s)=3, 600, 000 J. (1.10)
Thus, if we want the answer in kilowatt-hours (which is more useful in calculating
the cost of the electricity), we can simplify the calculation in equation 1.9 as
follows:
energy = (1 kW) × (24 hours) = 24 kWh. (1.11)
Just remember that the kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy, not power, while the
kilowatt (or megawatt, etc.) is a unit of power, not energy. (Newspaper writers
seem to get this wrong about as often as they get it right, indicating that they’re
just guessing randomly. Now you know better!)