Are you seriously trying to say that if you're talking about a solar panel it makes more sense to talk about how much energy it produces per second than per hour. If you wanted to think about the amount a panel can produce per day are you sitting there thinking about how many seconds of sunlight it will get in a day.

If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday you think it's more intuitive to go 400 * 3600 * 8 / 1,000,000 than 400 / 1000 * 8?

The reason seemingly every electrical utility in the world uses kWh is because hours are the more intuitive unit of time for this context.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Are you seriously saying that when you're talking about a solar panel you care about how much energy it produces per hour, not per second, per day, per week, or per year?

If you want to estimate the energy usage of a 400 watt lighting system during an 8 hour workday

Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?

Are you seriously saying that when you're using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it? Are you seriously pretending that your 800 watt microwave oven is on for a full hour at full power while you're heating your nuggets, so it makes sense to think of it in terms of kilowatt hours?

The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they're used to it because their electrical utility uses it. It's the same reason that Americans think Fahrenheit is more intuitive, while the rest of the world thinks Celsius is more intuitive. It's why Americans think miles make more sense for measuring distance, while the rest of the world thinks kilometers are easier to use.

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 1 points 58 seconds ago

You can't scale the energy a solar panel generates per day from the nameplate capacity because you don't get days of uninterrupted sunlight. It doesn't make much sense to try to estimate at a higher resolution either because of clouds.

Why would you want to do that? And what kind of lighting system in 2026 uses 400 Watts?

A commercial one might and because that's the first step to figuring out how much it uses in a 5 day work week, or per month or year.

Are you seriously saying that when you’re using your 2000 watt hair dryer, you want to pretend that you used it for an hour, and then scale that back to the few seconds you actually used it?

No because if you're measuring usage of something in seconds it isn't going to have a meaningful impact on household consumption.

The reason most people think kWh is intuitive is that they’re used to it because their electrical utility uses it.

Ok even if that is true and they're both equally unintuitive you're the one who wants everyone to switch to an unfamiliar unit for no apparent reason. Why does it make so much more sense to talk about solar and electric car charging on the scale seconds of power than hours that everyone should change units?