GLOSSARY
Here are some terms you'll commonly see used when discussing energy issues. We also use this page for defining acronyms and other abbreviations used on the Oz-Energy-Analysis.org website. This glossary is preliminary - we'd like your help to expand and improve it. Please provide your suggestions or corrections in the comments section.
For a short 'energy primer' by Barry Brook, read here .
- AEMO: Australian Energy Market Operator. See here for details.
- BoM: Australian Bureau of Meteorology. See here for details and data.
- Energy: Think of electrical energy as the volume of water in a bucket that has been filled by a tap flowing for a period of time. See "Power".
- ElectraNet: ElectraNet owns and manages the South Australian transmission system in the
National Electricity Market (NEM), providing the high voltage large capacity network for generators to transport their electricity to end users.
- giga: A billion (thousand million). A large coal-fired or nuclear power station produces about 1 gigawatt of electrical power. In one year, Australia uses
about 250,000 GWh of electrical energy.
- joule: Unit of energy. It takes about 1 million joules (MJ) to boil a kettle of water. Australia uses about 900 petajoules (PJ) of electrical energy each year.
- kilo: A thousand. For instance, a kilowatt (kW) is 1,000 watts of power. A kilowatt hour (kWh) is the energy produced by a 1 kW generator in 1 hour.
- mega: A million. For instance, a megawatt (MW) is 1,000 kilowatts of power. A large modern wind turbine, about 50 m tall, produces about 1 megawatt of peak power.
- Oz: Strine for Australia or Australian.
- Power: Think of electrical power as the flow rate of water gushing out of a tap. See "Energy".
- SA: The state of South Australia.
- tera: A trillion. For instance, a terawatt (TW) is 1,000 gigawatts of power. World electricity consumption is currently around 2 TWe.
- watt: Unit of power at a point in time, equal to 1 joule per second. Is capitalised when used with other units, such as kilowatt (kW).
When talking specifically about electrical energy, the subscript "e" is often added to an abbreviation, such as "MWe". Thermal energy would be "MWt".
- watt hour: Unit of energy, equal to 3,600 joules, or 1 watt delivered continuously over a period of 1 hour. You'll often see large amounts of energy expressed in
terms of kilowatt hours (kWh), megawatt hours (MWh) or gigawatt hours (GWh).
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bwb - May 2010
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