A coal-fired electric power plant produces 12 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each day.

Question

Assume that an input of 10,000 BTUs of heat is required to produce an output of one kilowatt-hour of electricity. Calculate the number of BTUs of heat needed to generate the electricity produced by the power plant each day.

I need help please

Answer 1

This problem involves a simple process of unit conversion. Let's identify what we know:

Amount of power per day: 12,000,000 kWh

BTU per kWh: 10,000

The end goal is to get a unit of BTU per day. Let's start by making a fraction of kWh per day:

12,000,000 kWh / day

Now all we need to do is figure out how to replace the kWh with BTU. Let's look at our other fraction:

10,000 BTU / kWh

If we can cancel out units by multiplying the two fractions, we will be able to get our answer quicker. We can multiply the units in this order to cancel out the kWh:

(kWh / day) * (BTU / kWh)

When we do this, we cancel out the kWh and are left with BTU / day. All we have to do now is plug in the appropriate numbers into this fraction:

(12,000,000 kWh / day) * (10,000 BTU / kWh) = 1.2*10¹¹ BTU / day

Hope this helps!