I’ve seen electricity being measured for like houses and stuff with kWh, but i always see on batteries it’s measured with mAh. what’s the difference? also, is there such thing as Volt-hours?
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It’s easy to get confused. Amps are important because they represent the flow of electricity (and as a direct result, the size of wire needed to safely conduct that flow), regardless of the voltage. Your house likely has electricity available in both 120 volts and 240 volts. Watts are the result of volts, multiplied by amps. So, you might have an appliance that consumes 1200 watts but that doesn’t tell you the whole story. If it’s 120 volts, it draws 10 amps but if it’s 240 volts, it draws 5 amps.
The examples given are for one moment in time. A fridge might draw maybe 500 watts but only when it’s compressor is running, which isn’t all the time. This is where the element of accumulating time plays a roll, and where you’ll see the ‘h’ added to the end of the kW or mA. One kWh is equivalent to 1000 watts, running for one hour. The fridge I mentioned earlier, if it’s compressor was running 50% of the time, would take 2 hours to consume 1000 watt/hours (1 kWh).
Batteries is a bit more confusing, mostly because the voltages are all over the place. Cell phones are usually 5 volts. AA batteries are 1.5 volts. Car batteries are 12 volts. I’m not sure why they can’t just list all batteries as watt/hours instead of making us look up the voltage and do the math. I think they like to intentionally muddy the waters for the average person. I’ve never seen the term volt/hours used.
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