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Comment by jhardcastle | Hacker News Reader

> During its lifetime, Ratcliffe - commissioned in 1967 - has generated enough power to make more than a billion cups of tea every day.

The most British unit of energy measurement possible. What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven?

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While that's very British, you forget the obvious: The BTU is the British Thermal Unit.

Can't get any more British than something with British in its name. Not to mention it's very widely used in practice, though it's up there with pounds, gallons, and miles.

Spoken like a true American. Despite the name, the BTU is an American customary unit, used almost exclusively in America for measuring the power of air conditioners. In practice, it's not quite extinct in the UK as gallons are, but it's on the way.

The other weird unit for measuring air conditioning is "tons". One ton of air conditioning has nothing to do with the weight of the air conditioner. Instead, it means the air conditioner provides cooling equivalent to one ton of ice per day. One ton is almost exactly 12,000 BTU/h; curiously, the round number is a coincidence.

I think it might be more extinct than gallons, tbh. People still talk about miles per gallon a bit (note that, for extra confusion, a UK gallon isn’t the same as a US one) but _very_ few people would have reason to think about BTUs these days, I’d have thought.

The American version would be number of football fields smoked.

But you have to further specify whether you're using Carolina freedom units or Texas freedom units, because the two groups can't agree on whether it includes the end zones or not.

> What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven?

We tend to use homes powered. Which seems logical enough, until you realise there is a built-in assumption of 4,000 kWh/month homes.

holy tamole...

I think we use around 700-1000/month most months. who is using 4000/month?

1) big houses in the south with lots of AC.

2) at least one house in Pittsburgh that runs a few GPU servers for its owner's startup. ;) (not quite 4000, but over 3000 this month including our normal use and ac)

Our lowest/highest are 1800/3300 for a 6 adult FL household. Our lower number was 1700 but our winters keep warming.

Replying to myself:

I guess... there's only two adults in the house here, and a 2000 sq ft house with two heating/cooling units (up/down) and relatively modern windows/sealing.

I think this month will be 1200, and I think we'll have a couple more 1000-1200 kw/h months up ahead.

EDIT: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit.... This shows the average being 10500 kw/h/year, which seems to be in line with our use case. That average is including all housing types (apartments, detached homes, etc).

I live in a 1900sqft house of 4 people (and lots of electronics) in FL and we used 2477kwh last billing period. Our low period is about 1370kwh.

> until you realise there is a built-in assumption of 4,000 kWh/month homes.

No idea where you got that figure - you're off by a factor of four.

https://www.google.com/search?q=US+electic+usage+per+home

For example:

> The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that the average homeowner used about 914 kWh per month in energy

and https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...

It should be noted that the average for an apartment unit in most of the country is half that, and a substantial portion (40%) of the US population lives in apartments.

Perhaps they are conflating it with annual electricity consumption, which is about 4000 kwh per capita per year

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036

> No idea where you got that figure - you're off by a factor of four

From facts, yes. Forgot where I recently saw it, but it was in the amount of energy a datacentre in the South burns. Work backwards from the PR stats, and you get a moderately-large American house’s energy footprint.

Standardized Texas A/C hours.

If we're firing shots anyways, go with mobility scooter miles.

Surely in the case of firing shots it would be number of rifles manufactured or rounds produced.

Sure, use round numbers.

Too many holes in this idea.

It's also the British billion which is larger than the American billion.

It's probably not, unless you've calculated that it is? It's not at all common any more, led by financial interoperability I think.

(Unfortunately in my opinion: it seems more logical than the American/standard billion. We go up to nine until we run out of units and start on tens, until we run out at nine tens and nine and start on hundreds, until we run out at nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on thousands, until we run out at nine hundred and nine tens and nine thousand and nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on millions. Why then only go to nine hundred and nine tens and nine million (...)? It breaks the pattern of using all the expressable numbers until you run out and have to start a new word.)

True, but the pattern would break down with (the long-scale) definition of trillion in any case.

The long scale makes sense because it is powers of a million -

- one million - 10^6,

- one billion (long scale) - 10^12 - ‘bi’ meaning two, is a million squared,

- one trillion (long scale) - 10^18 - ‘tri’ meaning three is a million cubed,

- one quadrillion (long scale) - 10^24 - ‘quad’ meaning four is a million to the power four.

In each step of the American system, you go up by a factor of 1000 each time. There is no discontinuity.

The problem was that there were once two billions, the short billion and the long billion. The English world decided to use the short billion and the French world decided to use the long billion.

Long-scale billions are essentially never used in English, and for official purposes the UK switched to short-scale billions in 1973. So, er, probably not.

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