General Electrics

General Electrics (to assist with understanding solar power).

1. What is DC Electricity?
   DC Electricity is "direct current" and is the electricity generated by your solar panels and stored in your batteries.
2. What is AC Electricty?
   AC Electricity is "alternating current" as connected to most houses and buildings in most areas of the world. This is the electricity your inverter will produce to run your appliances like the TV stereo and blender in a desirable manner.
3. What is a Volt?
   A Volt is the unit of measure for electrical potential. It is also considered to be like water pressure in a pipe carrying a certain volume of water (current).
4. What is an Ampere (current)?
   Commonly referred to as Current - It is the amount of electricity flowing (volume) and is proportional to the amount of power being used. A definition would be that an item that uses a large amount of electricity, say a heater or an iron will draw more current than a little electrical appliance like a light globe. Current is measured in amps or more correctly amperes. While voltage could be called the potential of electricity, current is the amount of power that comes out of the wire.
5. What is a WATT?
   A WATT is the unit for measuring electrical power, i.e., the rate of doing work, in moving electrons by, or against, an electrical potential. Formula: Watts = Amperes x Volts. In Zimbabwe, we buy power by the KiloWatt Hour (KWh).
6. What is Watt-Hour (Watt-Hr, WH)?
   A WATT-HOUR is the unit of measure for electrical energy expressed as Watts x Hours. Or 1000 Watts x hours (KWh).
7. How is a microwave rated for wattage?
   When you buy a microwave oven you want to know how intense the microwave field is, not how much the oven draws from the wall. So a microwave oven that boasts 600 watts on the box, will often have 1200 watts on the boilerplate in the back.
8. Are stereo amplifiers rated the same way?
   Stereo manufacturers are bigger liars than politicians. Sometimes they use peak output power (milliseconds), sometimes they use power drawn from the wall, but often they just look at the competition's carton front and add 10%. However the truth is available: look at the boilerplate sticker, which has been evaluated by standards organization.

Further reading

[1] Clamore Web Site, retrieved 26 June 2019