Are you seriously saying that when you're talking about a solar panel you care about how much energy it produces per hour, not per second, per day, per week, or per year?

If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday

Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?

Are you seriously saying that when you're using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it? Are you seriously pretending that your 800 watt microwave oven is on for a full hour at full power while you're heating your nuggets, so it makes sense to think of it in terms of kilowatt hours?

The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they're used to it because their electrical utility uses it. It's the same reason that Americans think Fahrenheit is more intuitive, while the rest of the world thinks Celsius is more intuitive. It's why Americans think miles make more sense for measuring distance, while the rest of the world thinks kilometers are easier to use.

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

You can't scale the energy a solar panel generates per day from the nameplate capacity because you don't get days of uninterrupted sunlight. It doesn't make much sense to try to estimate at a higher resolution either because of clouds.

Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?

A commercial one might and because that's the first step to figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year.

Are you seriously saying that when you’re using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it?

No because if you're measuring usage of something in seconds it isn't going to have a meaningful impact on household consumption.

The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they’re used to it because their electrical utility uses it.

Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason. Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago

figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year

In which case you're multiplying by large numbers so it doesn't matter if you start with Joules or kilowatt-hours, so you should start with the SI unit.

Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason.

The reason is that there is an SI unit for energy, and using the non-standard unit is dumb.

Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?

Because there's an SI unit for energy, and there's nothing superior about kWh, it just adds to the confusion to have multiple different units that all measure the same thing. You get the stupid situation that Americans have with other units where there's teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, gallons, ounces, etc. all for measuring volume instead of just using L for everything.