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How Much Power Is 1.21 Gigawatts, Anyway? The Science Behind Back to the Future (www.syfy.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/scifi@kbin.social
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Back to the Future's 1.21 gigawatts sounds huge, but is it? We compare different power levels of common objects to see how much energy a gigawatt really is.

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[–] 5 points 2 years ago (7 children)

1.21gw == output of 1 nuke plant for 1 day == power single home for 100 years

avg lightning = 10gw

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Where are you getting those numbers from? First of all, GW is a unit of power, not energy. You can’t “produce 1.21GW in a day” because it’s a measurement of instantaneous power. Some nuclear reactors produce around 1GW(e), which means 1 gigawatt hour per hour.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    haha, i read the article. its all in there.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, and the article is wrong, though only slightly. They seem to be confusing watts (power, energy over time) with Joules (energy, power times a duration of time). They give a passable definition in the beginning ("energy transfer"), but they seem to misunderstand what the "transfer" part means exactly.

    If you find-replace all instances of "watt" with "watt-hour" after that starting definition, it would be more accurate. That's why I say it's only slightly wrong.

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