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[deleted] t1_iwzbk0s wrote

Reply to comment by guineapigfrench in How does the land use of different electricity sources compare? by envatted_love

No, they are using power (MWh per year). The reason you use a long duration like that is because some power sources like wind and solar vary a lot from day to day and hour to hour so you average them over a year.

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guineapigfrench t1_iwzcri7 wrote

Mr./Ms. Duck,

I noted that at the end of my comment:

>I think, and it's really not made clear here, that they're discussing the average amount of energy per year, which gives you this strange unit of power that the author made up, of megawatt hours per year (two time units in the same metric?)

And I probably should have included an alternative suggestion, that instead of creating a new power unit, they simply say "kilowatts" and average across the year. It would be weird for them to pick one hour, say the 5am-6am hour of March 20th, and use that as a comparison- I would assume they're working in averages, but it would be good to state that explicitly.

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[deleted] t1_iwzd19h wrote

Anyone who works in the industry would already understand because this is a normal unit of measure.

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guineapigfrench t1_iwzeio7 wrote

This is not for "anyone who works in the industry," the site "ourworldindata" has a self-declared purpose: "The goal of our work is to make the knowledge on the big problems accessible and understandable."

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