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Numbers about electric consumption How much coal do you throw on the fire?
Susan Karan
Editor
Would you be comfortable throwing another bag of coal on the fire and living amongst your smoke. How much coal does it take to do those little tasks?
Let´s do some maths on a real world object and work it out. How about a 60 Watt light bulb staying on for a year.
60 Watts is 0.06 kW
1 year is 8760 Hours
That's 525.6kWh to keep the light on for a year(0.06 * 8760)
Thermal Energy of coal 6780 kwh/1000kg.
But normally only about 40% of that can be converted into electricity, thermodynamics being what it is.
That means 2712kWh takes 1000kgs (0.4 x 6780 kwh/1000kgs).
If 1000Kgs generates 2712kWh then 194kgs generates 525.6kWh.
That means 194kgs for just one low wattage light bulb.
So 1 kg generates 0.368kW for a year (you could turn you 60W bulb on for a bit over 6 hours).
1 kW takes 2.712 kg.
That's without getting into Sulfur dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Carbon Dioxide and radiation.
And this is if the power plant is next door to you.
