When they say a 5 MW generator what timeframe will it produce 5 MW? Is it an hour, a day??? Unsure of the timeframe so I am not sure how to calculate how many kw it would produce in a month.
2007-12-20 01:30:56 · 7 answers · asked by FamilyMan 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
Yes, I guess I was wanting kwh and not kw. So which answer do I use to divide by?
2007-12-20 03:51:41 · update #1
OK. Maybe I am confused? When you get your electic bill, are you paying for kw or kwh?
2007-12-20 03:54:01 · update #2
You pay for the energy delivered to you. It generally doesn't matter whether you use it uniformly throughout the billing period, or all in one day. Power is energy per unit time. Assuming the generator is operating at its full capacity for the entire time, you can calculate the amount of electric energy it produces during any given time interval. One unit of such energy is the watt-hour, which is the energy transferred during one hour at the power rate of one watt. The rest is simple arithmetic.
2007-12-21 07:42:47 · answer #1 · answered by Frank N 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Steve and Frank are correct, but don't quite get to the simple answer to the question.
The electric company charges you for the energy you use, which could be billed in terms of Joules, but isn't. It is billed in terms of kW-hours or kWh.
If a 1 kW generator generates it's max power for 1 hour, then it has produced 1 kWh of energy. Pretty simple.
A 5 MW generator will produce,
5,000 kW * 24hours * 31days = 3.72e6 kWh,
of energy in a month.
2007-12-22 16:35:15 · answer #2 · answered by Tom H 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There is confusion in the above answers as well as in the question.
Power by definition is a rate of energy output. Watts are joules per second, so as mentioned above a 5MW generator delivers 5 million joules in a second.
You could compute how many joules of *energy* the generator delivers in a month, but there is no such thing as how much *power* (in the strict sense) it puts out in a month.
I have a feeling the question is meant to ask about energy in kilowatt-hours, not power in kW. A kwh is 1000 watts times the number of seconds in an hour (3600), so a kWh is 3.6 million joules. Just convert the number of joules the generator delivers in a month to kWh by dividing by 3,600,000.
2007-12-20 03:03:52 · answer #3 · answered by Steve H 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
power = work / time
a watt is defined as one joule per second
thus, a 5MW generator is generating 5,000,000 joules per second
But, if you're only interested in how many watts in a month, this is even easier.
Power (watts) * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * number of days that month (28, 29, 30 or 31)
First convert Megawatts to Kilowatts. 5 MW = 5,000 KW
so, for a month with 30 days:
5,000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 = 12960000000 KW
or 1.296 * 10^10 KW
2007-12-20 01:38:10 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
5 Megawatt Generator
2016-12-16 03:09:53 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
All of these answers are correct but generally the generator will only output to meet demand. Therefore there is no way to accurately tell how much power it will put out only the maximum it can put out.
2014-10-23 00:58:21 · answer #6 · answered by Any_Mouse 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
a 5 megawatt generator will put out those mega watts in an hour.
24 hours in a day 30 days in a month, more or less.
so 5000x 24x30 is 3,600,000 KW
2007-12-20 01:36:03 · answer #7 · answered by Chup 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋