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What does the 5 wh mean?

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Technical Discussion' started by etobia, May 25, 2015.

  1. etobia

    etobia Member

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    I've been driving my 2010 for, 5 lovely years. I've never understood what the 5 wh cars are all about in the display screen. What do they mean and why should I care? i hope they are meant to be a good thing.... Should I be concerned if I'm seeing more of them?
     
    #1 etobia, May 25, 2015
  2. nwprius

    nwprius Member

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    It means you (the car) has created, added to your battery, 5 watt hrs of electricity. Happy, happy.
     
    #2 nwprius, May 25, 2015
  3. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    Yeah, that's pretty much it. In the span of five minutes, you netted +5wh. It's possible that within the next five minutes you just might use up those 5wh. So it's really not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

    Back in the day, we tried to figure out whether it's better to have a bunch of cars or fewer cars. Each car on the Consumption screen represents 5wh generated. In the end, IIFC, we had mixed results and couldn't come up with anything conclusive.
     
    #3 TonyPSchaefer, May 25, 2015
  4. kbeck

    kbeck Active Member

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    And, just so we're clear on all this: A watt is power and is the rate of energy use. So, one Joule per second is a rate of energy consumption of one watt. Um. A Joule is the amount of energy

    The most common SI unit for energy is the Joule. However, for various reasons, people like Watt-hours. One W-hr is 3600 Joules.

    KBeck
     
    #4 kbeck, May 28, 2015
  5. CR94

    CR94 Senior Member

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    An hour equals 3600 seconds, so obviously a watt-hour is 3600 watt-seconds (=3600 Joules).

    Joules are too small to be convenient for many everyday purposes, so we customarily use watt-hours and kilowatt-hours, although kilojoules and a megajoules would be more logical and convenient.
     
    #5 CR94, May 28, 2015
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