
Batterymakers See a Big Break Coming – No, Seriously This Time - T-A
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-16/batterymakers-see-a-big-break-coming-no-seriously-this-time
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ScottBurson
I wish I could get all journalists into one room for a couple of hours and
teach them the difference between energy and power, and what a watt and a
watt-hour are.

In most of this article we have "storage capacity" being reported in GW. In
the last paragraph, though, the article switches without explanation to MWh.
<facepalm>

In fact, we want _both_ numbers: instantaneous power capability in (some
multiple of) watts, and storage capacity in (some multiple of) watt-hours.
These are different numbers, just as the HP rating of the engine in your car
and the size of its gas tank are different numbers.

I suspect people would be less confused if we used joules instead of watt-
hours for energy, and then reported power in joules per second. Yes, 1W =
1J/s, but that's the thing: intuitively people expect the base unit to be an
_amount_ , not a _rate_. Then instead of "1.3GW", an article like this would
say "1.3GJ/s", and it would be (relatively) obvious that that's a rate of
power delivery, not a storage capacity. Or instead of "65MWh" it would say
"234GJ" (the conversion factor is 3600, there being 3600 seconds in an hour).

Oh well. I know I'm preaching to the choir here on HN. Just had to rant a
little :-)

