AWG Blogs

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Volts, Amps, and Watts, Oh my!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volt

Had to read it twice before I realized that a Volt represents the potential power, while Amps represents the actual power. "Watts" represent the actual power as well, but it's the total power arrived at by multiplying amps by volts.

Another realization I had when researching power consumption constraints for a possible home data center was that the "watts" specification on the side of appliances is actually the measure of watts per hour (DUH!). So if the space heater is 1500 watts, that means it's using 1500 watts (1.5 kW) per hour (if it's turned on and set to High).

More notes:
Helpful discussion here.

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