Talk:Orders of magnitude (power)

ELI corrections
Eli will generate 200PW on their site they write i quote : "..The highest intensity pillar location will be decided in 2012. The laser power will reach the 200 PW or 100 000 times the power of the world electric grid. It will depend, among other things, on the laser technology development and validation. It could be built on one of the existing three sites or in a new country. With the possibility of going into the ultra-relativistic regime, ELI will afford new investigations in particle physics, nuclear physics, gravitational physics, nonlinear field theory, ultrahigh-pressure physics, astrophysics and cosmology (generating intensities exceeding 10²³ W/cm²).... "

But note also that 10^23 number.. wel at least for sure those machines are going to be the most powerfull ones.. Any ideas here how powerufll the LHC is ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.107.182.108 (talk) 10:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

How small?
Anyone have a good idea how small this should go? It seems to me that most of the really small powers are better expressed as energy, when you have reactions of individual molecules and such. I know some LEDs and such go at least down to microwatts, and there's the now-infamous (there's that word again!) antpower, albeit badly calculated. Anybody know any nanowatts or smaller that have any use? Perhaps the average power output of a single human cell, or something like that? -- John Owens 10:34 19 May 2003 (UTC)

Multiple of three powers instead of decades
Also, I'm open to suggestions as to when we should start grouping by thousands instead of decades. I'm thinking around 1 E24 W, and around 1 E-6 W if we go any smaller than that. Comment? -- John Owens 13:26 19 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Should the examples be in "engineering" scientific notation? in other words, multiple of three exponents.  for instance, in the kilowatts section was a 1.1x10^4.  i changed it to 11x10^3, so that it is in kilowatts.  This is certainly the way I would prefer units, but I am an engineer and others may not like it. - Omegatron 15:30, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)


 * I would like the numbers include a non-three-power notation i.e. write 1x10^4 W as 10 kW; 1.4x10^5 W as 140 kW and so forth. I think this will make the sections more readable for people not familiar with this notation, and greatly increase readability. --Deelkar 04:00, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Conversion corrected
I corrected the conversion from 1MW to horsepowers. I used g = 9.80665m/s^2, which should be common average, after calculation it came slightly less than 1360.

Put these all in one page
I really, really think this should all be one one page. It will make it a lot more usable, and easier to maintain into the bargain. Onebyone 03:12, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Done, and since even on one page the list still doesn't look at all cramped, I think the result is the right thing. There are now 48 redirects to this page... Onebyone 01:25, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

which world
"average total power consumption of the world"


 * this just means human activities, right? - Omegatron 03:00, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

total power consumption
the issue isn't with the words "power consumption", but with the word "total", implying the amount of power consumed in one year, which is silly, since power is a rate per unit time. i think the "total" just means "total for all of the united states", not "total for the entire year", but we should rephrase and get a reference. - Omegatron 17:02, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Maybe I misunderstood. Is "total power consumption" meant to include non-electrical power?  If so, that's my mistake, and it should probably be restored to the way it was before I removed it.  --Doradus 23:23, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh yeah, you're probably right. Either way, it should be verified and explicitly phrased. - Omegatron 14:45, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)


 * I came here looking for an explination of this ... I figured someon had asked. SO does this mean Total ELECTRICAL power consumption vs. Totoal power of all types consumption.  Is is an avrage?  a peak?  im so confused %-)  Dalf | Talk 05:05, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * "...3.34 TW – geo: average total (gas, electricity, etc.) power consumption of the U.S. in 2005[14] ...."
 * This entry is ambiuous in terminology. TW is Power NOT Consumption- TW-year [8760 TWh]is Energy(Consumption).
 * From the source[14] this is 100.4 "quadrillion Btu" PER YEAR - taking quadrillion to be 10^15 Btu this would be 1.15 x 10^13 Btu/hr = 3.35 X 10^9 KW = 3.35 TW??
 * The entry might read better as: "Rate of Energy consumption in the USA averaged over the year 2005"
 * BTW the units for Power are often ambiguous: Watts are units of Mechanical Power, Btuh are units of Heat Transfer -actually there does not appear to be any units for "Electrical" Power - the Volt-Ampere is actually Joule/Coulomb X Coulombs/sec = Joules/sec = watts.


 * What, not watt, would be a good unit of electrical power? And the famous person named for it - DeGraff, Franklin? Any takers?


 * Pete318 (talk) 17:49, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Watts are also useful units of electrical power. In this case it is very unusual to get to kW that way. Quads are a standard unit of measure, as are kWh, but to back quads into a measure of instantaneous power like that is a bit unclear. A better example of this would be that the total generating capacity of the planet is estimated to be 5,360 GW (or 5.36 TW)...ref
 * gjmulhol (talk 04:34 17 December 2012

Categories?
What is the point of all the tags (Biomed, tech, etc.) on this page? Is it not obvious that something related to lasers is technological and something related to blue whales is biological? I just don't really see the point of these at all. --Deglr6328 03:44, 10 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's silly. If it's not clear what a particular example is, it should be clarified in prose. — Omegatron 14:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Science fiction
Moreover, many example, in particular Sci-Fi ones, are just totally irrelevant and non-representative. The power consumption of the StarTreck enterprise is just a random number picked by the scenarist. --137.194.3.137 14:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see anything wrong with sci-fi entries. We don't want them to overwhelm everything else, but a few notable ones (estimated power the Death Star would require to explode a planet, etc.) are fine. — Omegatron 14:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If the figures are canon, and can be traced to an official source, then it could be interesting to compare them with real world examples. The power generated by the Death Star is around 3 x 10^33 watts, going by a number of technical commentaries, but has never been stated in a canonical source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.150.62 (talk) 02:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The energy required to produce the effects of the Death Star as portrayed in the film can be estimated; dividing by the firing time gives the power. On the other hand electric power output required to operate flux capacitor is an arbitrary quantity, since not only the device but also the physics is entirely fictional. Therefore I shall (again) remove the flux capacitor entry. --catslash (talk) 17:46, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Photosynthesis
I corrected the power (by about 10 x) based on total primary production of fixed carbon, calculated as if in the form of carbohydrates. Harold f 22:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Better power calculation based on Science article on primary production (PDF).Harold f 02:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Let me add another 100fold to the "average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer of land": It is not specified what kind of land. All land, desert, tropics, northern Europe, tundra? Also, I doubt that 16-23 kW is correct for either of them. In the cited source FAO I couldn't find any such figure. The only information in that source that seems to be closer related is "The net result being an overall photosynthetic efficiency of between 3 and 6% of total solar radiation."(FAO). Even if we only assume 1% efficiency and combine that with another source that says "average irradiance over the year is [...] roughly [...] 100 W/m^2 or 2.4 kWh/m^2/day in northern Europe, e.g. the UK" (Energy Balance: Photosynthesis and Peak Oil) we get 100 * 0.01 W / m^2 = 1 W / m^2

1 square kilometer of land is 10^6 m^2 or 100 ha

=> 10^6 W / km^2 = 1 MW / km^2

or 10 kW / ha (northern Europe at 1% photosynthetic efficiency).

Energy Balance: Photosynthesis and Peak Oil says the average irradiance over the year in the tropics is 208 W / m^2. Considering the maximum photosynthetic efficiency of 6% (FAO), we'd have: 208 * 0.06 W / m^2 = 12.48 W / m^2 1 ha is 10,000 m^2

=> 124.8 kW / ha (tropics at 6% photosynthetic efficiency)

0 kW / ha (desert)

I'd suggest:

"0 - 125 kW - average photosynthetic power output per hectare of land"

... and be happy if somebody with more knowledge on this topic could help out. Zico75 (talk) 13:02, 11 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zico75 (talk • contribs) 11:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Io's flux tube
Io's flux tube carries about 10^12, not 10^18. I'll try look for something around 10^18.

Thric3 20:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

3 GW - Tech: approximate peak power generation of the world's largest nuclear reactor?
Which nuclear reactor is the world's largest? TerraFrost 17:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

This is wrong, as the largest Nuclear powerplant is the Kashizaraki plant in Japan, with a 8.212 Gigawatt output. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.1.135.191 (talk) 18:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

How many reactors does it have then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.130.87.224 (talk) 18:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Citation needed?
Was looking for the average power output of cars, and got really confused when I ran into "GEN H-4 one-man helicopter" at 30kW (less than the power output range cited for typical automobiles). There doesn't seem to be a wikipedia page on this helicopter, or any citation on this 30kW claim. Is there seriously a helicopter that takes less gas than the most efficient car? Because if so then I want one!


 * This thing is essentially a backpack with rotors, which very brave (or stupid) individuals strap on their backs as the best available iteration of a helicopter hat. By the way, 30kW is a lot of power even in general aviation, e.g. in the 1929 a hungarian flew an 18hp (13kW) ultralight airplane from the Balkans up to Sweden and back, a total of 5000km in seven days, including to detours via Germany. We are totally spoiled by 100+ kw cars and 65 kilo hp powerful jet airliners nowadays. 91.83.2.152 (talk) 21:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Wrong decimal point
> 10 MW - tech: highest ERP allowed for an UHF television station

This is clearly impossible. A very large AM band radio station with a 300 meter tall tower emits maximum 2MW and can be heard up to 1000 kilometers away (for example I was able to listen to MR1 Radio Kossuth of Budapest, Hungary during the late evenings when I visited Turin in North Italy in 2000).

A radio emitter tower with 2MW power output has water-cooled vacuum tubes the size of a schoolkid, which need replacement every few hundred hours due to the excessive wear caused by such high power.

There is absolutely no way an FM emitter (TV station) will produce 10MW of radio frequency, it would just melt the surroundings away and jam the military radar crew to madness. Obviously the article has the decimal dot in the wrong position, and it should be 1MW or maybe 0.1MW i.e. 100kW! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.83.2.152 (talk) 20:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Figures hard to reconcile
On the one hand, the article says that the point at which signal power is overwhelmed by thermal fluctuations is around 10−18 watts. On the other hand, the power of the Galileo space probe's radio signal as received on earth is said to be 10−20 watts – some 100 times smaller. How can that be? 86.179.2.205 (talk) 20:14, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * First and most obviously, MASERs are not nanoelectromechanical systems at all, so those numbers wouldn't necessarily bear much relation. Remember Shannon's theorem says you can pull signal (at appropriately reduced bitrate) through any noise level. However, it's likely that the NEMS limit refers to room temperature (I don't have access to the cited article), whereas the LNAs for the DNS are cryogenically cooled with liquid He, and have a noise temperature of about 2 K IIRC. Google "Galileo S-Band Contingency Mission" for more information. 75.145.190.85 (talk) 03:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Luminosity of Deneb
On this page, Deneb's luminosity is 1.23 x 10^32 watts. On the List of most luminous stars, it is equivalent 47,000 Solar luminosity, which works out at approx. 1.8 x 10^31 Watts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.81.72 (talk) 23:07, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

global primary production
is listed as 75 TW, but http://guidedtour.windpower.org/en/tour/wres/index.htm#note2 says 19 TW, by somewhat dubious calculation.

Also, what is the gross for the entire globe? http://newton.umsl.edu/infophys/lsp.html seems to say 1 PW, but also dubious.

"On average, plant gross primary production on earth is about 5.83 x 106 cal m-2 yr-1." which multiplied by the surface area of earth is 0.4 PW. http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/energyflow/energyflow.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.224.69.215 (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

might be good to separate ocean and land, too —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.224.69.215 (talk) 23:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Tsar Bomba removed

 * 210PW "tech" approximate yield produced by the Tsar Bomba fusion bomb, the most powerful man made device

It's not 210 PW, it's 210 PJ. Since the explosion took place in <<< 1 second, it's obviously EW or higher range. The Tsar Bomba article includes calculations indicating 5.4 YW, but that depends on an unsourced duration of 39ns. I removed Tsar Bomba here rather than changing it to 5.4 YW and moving it down the list and propagating unsourced information.

If anyone can find verifiable data for yield and duration for Tsar Bomba or any other nuclear blast, it would be quite good to have one in this list... 75.145.190.85 (talk) 01:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

This estimate is bogus. Oppenheimer's estimate is self-inconsistent: "This bomb, if harnessed and conatained, would have been 1.4% of the power output of the Sun, about 33.8 yottawatts. A yottawott is currently the largest watt mesurement we have, 10^24 watts. The sun's luminosity is about 384.6 YW." .014 * 384.6 YW = 5.3844 YW, which is nowhere near 33.8 YW.

Furthermore, if 33.8 YW is right, the peak power emission could not have lasted more than 7 nanoseconds (1 billionth of a second), because 240 petajoules / 33.8 yottawatts = 7.1 nanoseconds, which is the bomb's entire output. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.21.98 (talk) 05:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

800 kW?
800 kW – tech: approximate average power output of a small coal power plant?! 800 MW perhaps? --catslash (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I see a mistake
The liftoff power consumption of a Space Shuttle is listed as 11.7 GW, while that of the Saturn V is listed as 190 GW. However, the Space Shuttle set at liftoff is 2/3 as massive (2,000 metric tons) as a Saturn V (3,000 metric tons), so the Space Shuttle can’t be producing less than 1/10 as much power. I know what’s wrong: For the Space Shuttle, power is calculated as force (thrust) (about 3 × 107 N) multiplied by average speed (about 375 m/s). But for the Saturn V it is calculated as rate of consumption of fuel energy: The first stage weighed 2,286,217 kg when fully fueled and 135,218 kg when empty, giving it a total mass of 2,286,217 – 135,218 = 2,150,999 kg of propellant (RP-1 + lox). If the propellant had an energy of combustion of about 15 MJ/kg, and it burned for 168 seconds, then the total average power would’ve been

(2,150,999 kg)(1.5 × 107 J/kg)/(168 s) = 1.92 × 1011 W

(See the article Saturn V.) Btw, the power figure for the Saturn V needs a citation, as do some other part of this article.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 00:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Total world vs total US?!?
So total US is 4 Pettawatt and total world is 14 terrawatt ? WTF ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.2.129.221 (talk) 19:25, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * It's implausible that the US generates 4 PW. If you follow the link in the reference attached to this claim, you will find that: The United States, by contrast, generated about 373 times more electricity, with roughly 4 million gigawatt-hours of total generation in 2015, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. (which means an average over the year of less than 0.5 TW). It seems that there has been a confusion between energy and power. I shall delete the 4 PW claim (you would have been more than welcome to do that yourself, by the way). --catslash (talk) 22:28, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Power and energy
Sorry to butt in, but whoever drafted this list seems not to understand the difference between power and energy. You can't "generate" power and you can't "consume" it. See the relevant Wikipedia articles (or a good university primer) for a more detailed explanation if necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.244.23.193 (talk) 15:53, 12 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It's true that power and energy are often confused, but electrical power generation is a commonly used term, and does not indicate any such misunderstanding. --catslash (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2017 (UTC)


 * There is no need to apologise for butting in, and you are very welcome to rectify any short-comings of the article yourself. For me, the wording of the list is fine, but if you can find some phrasing that improves the grammar or technical exactitude, without detracting from the clarity (electrical power output perhaps?), then feel free to put it in.  You do need to be prepared for the fact that some other editor may disagree though. --catslash (talk) 18:46, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

new column "Value (decibel-milliwatts)"
I added a new column for "Value (decibel-milliwatts)" for < 1 W examples, and moved any dBm stats from the "Notes" column to this new dBm column, and filled in the rest of the datapoints for 1 < W examples. Actually, decibel-milliwatts also works for > 1 W too, so if people want to make a new column there, then that might be nice too. Decibels are well-suited for talking about orders-of-magnitude values. There is a calculator to convert from watts in scientific notation to dBm here: https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/power/Watt_to_dBm.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Em3rgent0rdr (talk • contribs) 15:05, 28 March 2022 (UTC)