Growing Sustainability

Electricity, the power that drives the world, is something not created, but rather harnessed and used to the benefit of all mankind. Its power going far beyond what is truly understood about it. As humans learn more about electricity’s natural properties it becomes more clear how they can use it, this unseen power and with that comes the need to be able to discuss and talk about it in order to have it used and understood. The collective understanding of electricity is broken up into many complex terms and meanings that can be discussed at a later time. Today it's time to focus on how to measure electricity and touch on why you might want to do that. It's time to delve into a complicated world but fear not, for you shall not journey alone. This shall serve as a guide to learning what a kilowatt is, why it's important and why you should care. In the end, the ultimate goal will be to prove that you can now estimate how many kilowatt-hours you are spending per day, per month and per year. Later on, it shall be discussed why this is important. Let's get started! What is a kilowatt? Before you get into measuring a kilowatt, and why that might be beneficial it is important that you understand what a kilowatt is. First named in 1882, watts and kilowatts became standard by the early nineteen hundreds. As a form of measurement having a national standard was going to be beneficial, so unlike the metric system, the world adopted the same type of measurement A kilowatt is a measurement of electrical energy. Just as animal bodies run through calories, electricity runs through watts. A kilowatt is one thousand watts. A kilowatt-hour is how many kilowatts are run through within the span of sixty minutes. This is how the electrical levels of the appliances work. An appliance will have a wattage on it, and it will operate within said wattage. For example, a fan has a certain amount of watts it uses per hour. A fan could have and exact amount of 125 kWh, but it is rated for 200, meaning appliances are rated at a level that is the maximum and is usually not reached by the device during normal usage. Finding the kWh is a way to find out exactly how much electricity you are using vs. just the wattage it is rated for. This becomes very important later on. How to tell how many kilowatts you are using: So now that you know what a kilowatt is, how do you actually determine how much of it per hour there is? Well, it's quite simple but there are a few steps to take. Let's get started. Step One: The first thing that you are going to do is to find the wattage of the device or appliance you are looking to find the kilowatt-hours of. Usually, there is a sticker on the underside or bottom corner of the appliance. Once you find this tag there should be something listed as “w”. This is the maximum power that the device can operate. This is not the rate at which it actually operates on average, just the maximum. Kilowatts per hour are usually lower than the wattage rating. Finding this gives you the wattage. Step Two: Now you are going to take the number that you have, which is the total wattage of the device, and you're going to multiply it by how many hours of the day the device is operating or using electricity. This is what matters when you are doing things like figuring out your electric bill. So for example, say you have a gaming console that is 200 watts, and you play 4 hours a day, that's 800 watts a day. Take that number to the next step. Step Three: Now you are going to take your number, which in this example is 800, and you are going to divide it by 1000. This is done to convert watts to kilowatts.. Taking 800, and dividing it by 1000 gets you 0.8 kWh, and that is how you get your answer. You will then have the KWh for that particular device and can configure that into your electric bill or whatever it is you might be doing. And there you have it! That is how you figure out the kilowatt per hour of the device that you are using! Whether its an Iphone or a toaster! See, pretty simple! Step Four: Now that you have determined how much electricity you are using per day you can apply that to a week, by multiplying it by 7 for a week, around 30 (or however many days of the month there are) to find a months worth of electricity and 365 for a year and so on depending on what you are specifically trying to figure out. Find the hourly, and daily worth and you can figure out the rest. To figure out the collective use of your entire household you would add all your devices up and the grand total would be how many kWh you are using in your household. Calculating the kWh of your devices or household on a yearly basis is just a little more math. Conclusions: Knowing a little about what a kilowatt is and how to measure them is something that can come in handy one day, you never know when you might need to know it. But for those in the electric or solar business, or even those who want to get involved on their own, it is crucial information. Most people are probably not going to go around calculating their electric bill by device but if you were going to, you now have the tools and know-how to do it! Which can be very useful in the right situation. Understanding and being able to determine your kWh is surprisingly not something that most people know how to do, so keep it in your bag of tricks for just the right time to reveal it and show off a bit. As to why this all matters, well that depends entirely on you and why you would need such information, from calculating your electric bill to how much the grid owes you for your solar panel production, knowing this information can come in handy here and there, and it never hurts to know things. So the question is, now that you know what a kilowatt is and how to determine how many of them pass through a current in an hour, what are you going to do with it?

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