do electric companies sell energy, work, or power?
im thinking its power because house hold appliances already contain electricity in them, and i think that the electric company supplies the power necessary to make the electricity flow. am i wrong?
More Questions From This User See All
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
They charge by the kWh, which is a measure of energy.
Power is energy per unit time, think of this as the rate of energy usage (or generation). An electric shower might have a power of 15 kW and be used for 5 minutes, this means it used 4.5 MJ of energy to heat the water. A TV set might have a power of 125 W and be used for 10 hours, this means it also used 4.5 MJ of energy. Their individual power usage doesn't matter since in the end they both used the same amount of energy.
Work (or mechanical work) is a specific type of energy energy, it is the energy transferred by a moving force in the direction that the force acts.
Listen to the rest of the bunch. What you're talking about isn't economically feasible. No one sells solar power back to the electric companies, Residential and commercial solar projects that generate more electricity than they consume, return their oversupply back to the grid for use at night, when panels aren't generating any power. If, at the end of your billing cycle, you've fed back more electricity into the grid than you've consumed, the utility will only issue you a credit - never cash. You should put that idea away for sure.
They sell you energy (equivalent to work) in Kilowatt hours. Energy is power x time.
They charge you for energy in a unit comprised of (power * time) namely kW-h = 3600000 J