Surely you are "sick" of saying "I bought a 25-watt bulb" but you don't really know what a watt is. The watt is the unit of measure used in the measurements of electric power and that is part of the International System. In English it has the term watt. Equivalent to one joule per second. Its symbol is W and it pays homage to the British mathematician and engineer James Watt.
In this article we are going to delve into the watts, what relevance it has for our life and we will compare it with volts, something very easy to confuse today. Do you want to learn all about it? Keep reading.
Watts Utilization
One of the areas in which this unit of measurement is used is in the field of electricity. It is common to see it to mark the electrical power that a device has and that can be expressed in watts. The more power it has, higher units of measurement such as kilowatts or megawatts are used. They just make both calculations and enumeration easy.
To say the electrical power that a wind farm it was spoken in megawatts, for example. On the other hand, to know the electrical power that is contracted in a home, we speak of kilowatts. And it is that electrical power refers to the rate at which energy is generated or used when a job is carried out. For better understanding: if we have an 80 watt light bulb on for an hour, 80 watt / hour will have been consumed.
The watt / hour is reflected in the power per unit of time. That is, the amount of energy that has been generated to keep the power of the bulb lit for a certain time. As mentioned before, one watt is equal to even July per second. Therefore, that device that consumes one watt of electrical power is actually consuming one joule per second. If the 80-watt bulb stays on for one hour, the joule equivalent will be 288.000 in that period.
80 watts in an hour = 80 joules per second x 3600 (in every hour there are sixty minutes; in every minute, sixty seconds. Therefore: 60 x 60 = 3600)
80 watt-hours = 288.000 joules
The electrical power in machinery
In machinery, motors and power plants the units of measure are kilowatts or megawatts. These units have horsepower and horsepower equivalents, for example.
It should be mentioned that in many cases confusion is created regarding the watt. This occurs because each person prefers to choose a unit of measurement with which they are used to working. Megawatts are used for renewable energy generation. It is the unit of measurement to mention the electrical power that is generated in a solar or wind farm. Today The renewable energies They are producing a large amount of energy in many countries that helps to solve the problems of pollution and climate change.
Major Confusions
Watt and volt
When people are confused with the units of measurement for electrical power, they often mistake watts for volts. It is the most common confusion that exists, since both terms are used within the electronic and electrical field and sound similar.
To avoid this error, we have to start from the definitions. We have said that the watt is the unit of measurement of electrical power. However, volt refers to the voltage or electrical potential voltage that exists. That is, the difference in the electric potential that exists between two specific points. To be clear, one refers to a voltage term and the other to a power term.
You can easily hear many people saying that "how many volts does such a device consume." It should be noted that volt is NOT a unit of measure of energybut from the tension.
Kilowatt and kilowatt hours
Another confusion that is often had is to confuse the watts with the kilowatt hours. And it is that when we talk about kilowatts we mean a unit of power. To understand it better, we compare it to the horsepower of a car engine. It is very common to hear comments such as "I have consumed 200 kilowatts of light." This does not make any sense, because it is being confused with kilowatt hours. Surely you have not heard say "my car on the trip has consumed 60 horses". Horsepower is the power of the vehicle, not its energy consumption.
To be completely clear, you have to think that the watt is an instantaneous term. Whenever we talk about watts, it has to be at a certain moment. This is not the case, for example, in the case of an electric radiator that consumes constantly.
Watts are also used in the world of sports, specifically in the field of cycling. Here it is used to refer to the measure of power that comes to record the force that the runner exerts to be able to move on his bicycle. In order to know the aforementioned force, it is usual for the two-wheeled vehicle to place electronic devices in the specific transmission area.
Watt and amps
When we want to know how much an electrical appliance consumes, it is common to confuse watts with Amps. Although some values may be the same (in the case of incandescent bulbs) they have nothing to do with each other. In this way, the power in watts is the real potential that a device consumes (it will have to be taken into account to choose the contracted power and prevent the ICP from operating). On the other hand, the Amps shows us the «apparent power» and it is used to correctly size the cables so that we do not produce a short circuit.
These concepts are all reflected in the electricity bill and it is due to the fact that the contracted kilowatts of power are very easily confused with the kWh of energy that we use. The first they have a fixed cost, while the seconds vary depending on your consumption.
The important thing about this whole post is to know how to differentiate the concepts so that, when paying our electricity bill, we know well what we are paying for.