Why are Watt Hours not Watts per Hour? Are they the same thing?

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Why are Watt Hours not Watts per Hour? Are they the same thing?

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Imagine a “water hour”. It’s how much water you have poured into a bucket, in total, over the course of an hour. 24 water hours would be how much water you have poured in a day, for example. A “water hour” would therefore be a VOLUME of water. How much in total.

Water per hour would be how much water your tap can push out in an hour. It’s a rate. A “speed” if you like.

One is a measure of how much you’ve done IN TOTAL (no matter whether the tap was dripping or gushing).

One is a measure of how fast you can do something at any given time, i.e. how fast the tap was running at a given moment. (But don’t forget the water “rate” can change all the way down to zero by you turning the tap on and off… but the water “volume” will always increase).

They are “related” in a very loose way but only because in your head you wouldn’t try to fill a swimming pool with a dripping tap, or a thimble with a firehose.

Watt hours are what you did in total.

Watts per hour were how fast you were doing it at a particular moment (a rate)

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