alt Hacker News> Her 3.5 foot by 3.5 foot solar panel weighs about 25 pounds and is a half-inch thick. It can harvest about 220 watts of energy from the sun each day.
Grrrr. Watts is not a unit of energy.
As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
/rant off
Replies
>As a holder of a physics degree this annoys me quite a lot. Journalists seem to have trouble keeping track of energy vs power. It's like saying my friends house is 5 miles per hour away.
I've ranted endlessly about the outsized impact people with no expertise but a large audience have had on society. So so many people have the worldview shaped by individuals that cannot even bother to learn basics like watts and watt-hours for their "reporting".
I have this peeve too, but tbh it feels like most people make this mistake, and usually it is easy enough to guess what was intended.
Just wait until you see "kW/h" :)
But I think plug-in / balcony solar will be pretty cool. And I think there's a path to inexpensive, larger, safer grid-tie inverters which never backfeed, but prioritize solar input first and make up the difference with grid power.
For example, I'm imagining a box that would plug in to the wall, have a DC input from solar panels, and a power strip for loads supporting up to, ideally, a full 15A normal US 120V circuit.
Currently this box exists in the form of battery power station units (Bluetti, Ecoflow, Anker etc). But I think there could be a much less expensive form that could exist without the battery.
You have to just close your eyes and hum a requiem for the glory days. Like I do when questions are begged