Confused by Kilowatt-Hours? Horse-Empires to the Rescue!
Proposing a new tongue-in-cheek measurement to give our electricity consumption some much-needed context
Every month, many of us get an electricity bill, grumble about the cost, ignore the kilowatt-hours (kWh) and forget all about it for another 30 days. As home appliances get more complex and electrified, it would help all of us to put the electrical energy into context: What is a kWh anyway?
A kWh is a measure of energy. Some of us learned in high school physics (and quickly forgot) that potential energy is mass x gravity x distance. Therefore, we can equate any energy to the amount it takes to lift a given mass to a certain height.
In this case, a kWh is equivalent to lifting a 1-ton object more than 1,250 feet (381 meters) off the ground. In other words, each kWh can lift a Clydesdale stallion (plus rider) to the top of the Empire State Building. A typical U.S. home uses 10,800 kWh per year. That’s 1 kWh every 50 minutes, or about 30 horse-empires per day, enough for a modest cavalry charge through the 102nd-floor observation deck.
