Is it watt per second or watt per hour

bionic6manuel

Say I have a device (Thermoelectric generator) that "generates power" at 4 watts, as per watt meter reading, is it producing 4 watts a second or 4 watts an hour. I say it is producing 4 watts a second but my brother in law says 4 watts an hour so the watt meter can tell the future. Please bear in mind I am not consuming energy but generating energy.

Dadface

Hello .Watts is a unit of power(Joules per second) so the 4 Watt device is producing 4 Joules per second.

To clarify this further the Joule is a unit of energy so the device is producing 4 Joules of energy every second.

cjl

Watts are a unit of power, so it doesn't make sense to talk about watts per hour (or per second). They already have the "per unit time" built in.

stevenb

It is generating 4 Watts for as long as you leave it on.

See Dadface's answer above. Power is a measure of how fast you generate energy (or consume it). Joules is a measure of total generated energy.

Your brother may be getting confused by the units WHr which is also a measure of energy (that's Watt hours, not Watts per hour). If you leave a 4 W device running for one hour, you generate 4 WHr of energy, which is 4 JHr/s x 3600 sec / 1 Hr, which is 14400 Joules.

bionic6manuel

I thank you all very much for the explanation

Pythagorean

Watts per time is the change in power over time :)