how to conceptualize energy units generated, distributed, and eventually used by loads throughout electricity grids (e.g. gigawatt, megawatt, megawatt-hours, kilowatt, kilowatt-hours, etc.)
In: Physics
Watts are power and not energy. Watts are a flow rate, and represent a watt-hour after an hour.
Energy flow rate is often limited by hardware. The wattage in a wire or component or generator should never exceed some amount.
Watt-hours, kilowatt-hours, and so on measure total energy. For the consumer, this means money. For the producer, this means coal or uranium or what-have-you. For the environmentalist, at least until we become more renewable, this means carbon.
As for prefixes, a moderately-sized LED will use about a watt. A moderately-sized space heater will use a kilowatt. A house uses maybe 6 kilowatts or so, obviously varying a lot with weather and time of day. A small city may use, by my calculations, very roughly 10 megawatts.
A power plant may produce around 1 gigawatt.
By my very loose math based on googled numbers, America may use about 1 terawatt during the hot hours of a summer day.
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