Electronic – Understanding electrical consumption

power

I have problems understanding the difference between electrical power and consumption. Can you help me understand what electrical energy consumption is?

Let's say that I have a bulb, on which is written 100 W. How much does this bulb consume in 1 hour? Can it have a power lower than 100 W? Can it have a power greater than 100 W?

I would like to know what is the relation between electrical power and electrical consumption.

I'm very sorry for the big disambiguation from my head. But I don’t know who else to ask. I hope that you will not consider my question as stupid, even if is so.

Best Answer

The issue you're confused about seems to be the difference between power and energy.

Energy is how much work you can do. Common units are joules or watt-hours.

Power is how fast you do work. It's a rate of change. Common units are watts or horsepower. Horsepower is probably an instructive unit to consider. Say you wanted to move a large pile of straw. Whether it's moved by a horse or a housecat doesn't affect the amount of work done. But the horse does it faster, because it's a more powerful animal.

For the purposes of discussing grid electricity consumption, watts (W) and kilowatt-hours (kWh) are the most common units used. To know how much energy is consumed, multiply the power by the time. 100 W x 1 hour is 100 watt-hours, or .1 kWh. In short, the relationship between power and consumption is time.

A 100W bulb consumes 100W assuming the voltage across it is what's specified on the package, which is usually 120V in my experience. If the voltage at your socket is lower, the bulb will consume less power. It's approximately a fixed resistance, so the power consumed is $$ P=\frac{V^2}{R} $$

As an aside, remember energy conservation. If something consumes 100W, that energy is being converted to some other form. Either it gets stored (potential energy), it's used (light, motion, etc.), or it's wasted as heat. For an incandescent bulb, ~90% of the power consumed is converted to heat. So a 100W incandescent bulb consumes 100W, but only outputs 10W of light. It gets hot because the other 90W is being wasted. Which is why CFL's run so much cooler and consume less power for the same light output.