The life of a Hackaday writer often involves hours spent at a computer searching for all the cool hacks you love, but its perks come in not being tied to an office, and in periodically traveling around our community’s spaces. This suits me perfectly, because as well as having an all-consuming interest in technology, I am a lifelong rail enthusiast. I am rarely without an Interrail pass, and for me Europe’s railways serve as both comfortable mobile office space and a relatively stress free way to cover distance compared to the hell of security theatre at the airport. Along the way I find myself looking at the infrastructure which passes my window, and I have become increasingly fascinated with the power systems behind electric railways. There are so many different voltage and distribution standards as you cross the continent, so just how are they all accommodated? This deserves a closer look.
So Many Different Ways To Power A Train
In Europe where this is being written, the majority of main line railways run on electric power, as do many subsidiary routes. It’s not universal, for example my stomping ground in north Oxfordshire is still served by diesel trains, but in most cases if you take a long train journey it will be powered by electricity. This is a trend reflected in many other countries with large railway networks, except sadly for the United States, which has electrified only a small proportion of its huge network.
Of those many distribution standards there are two main groups when it comes to trackside, those with an overhead wire from which the train takes its power by a pantograph on its roof, or those with a third rail on which the train uses a sliding contact shoe. It’s more usual to see third rails in use on suburban and metro services, but if you take a trip to Southern England you’ll find third rail electric long distance express services. There are even four-rail systems such as the London Underground, where the fourth rail serves as an insulated return conductor to prevent electrolytic corrosion in the cast-iron tunnel linings.
As if that wasn’t enough, we come to the different voltage standards. Those southern English trains run on 750 V DC while their overhead wire equivalents use 25 kV AC at 50Hz, but while Northern France also has 25 kV AC, the south of the country shares the same 3 kV DC standard as Belgium, and the Netherlands uses 1.5 kV DC. More unexpected still is Germany and most of Scandinavia, which uses 15 kV AC at only 16.7 Hz. This can have an effect on the trains themselves, for example Dutch trains are much slower than those of their neighbours because their lower voltage gives them less available energy for the same current.
In general these different standards came about partly on national lines, but also their adoption depends upon how late the country in question electrified their network. For example aside from that southern third-rail network and a few individual lines elsewhere, the UK trains remained largely steam-powered until the early 1960s. Thus its electrification scheme used the most advanced option, 25 kV 50 Hz overhead wire. By contrast countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands had committed to their DC electrification schemes early in the 20th century and had too large an installed base to change course. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to upgrade though, as for example in India where 25 kV AC electrification has proceeded since the late 1950s and has included the upgrade of an earlier 1.5 kV DC system.
A particularly fascinating consequence of this comes at the moment when trains cross between different networks. Sometimes this is done in a station when the train isn’t moving, for example at Ashford in the UK when high-speed services switch between 25 kV AC overhead wire and 750 V DC third rail, and in other cases it happens on the move through having the differing voltages separated by a neutral section of overhead cable. Sadly I have never manged to travel to the Belgian border and witness this happening. Modern electric locomotives are often equipped to run from multiple voltages and take such changes in their stride.
Power To The People Movers
Finally, all this rail electrification infrastructure needs to get its power from somewhere. In the early days of railway electrification this would inevitably been a dedicated railway owned power station, but now it is more likely to involve a grid connection and some form of rectifier in the case of DC lines. The exception to this are systems with differing AC frequencies from their grid such as the German network, which has an entirely separate power generation and high voltage distribution system.
So that was the accumulated observations of a wandering Hackaday scribe, from the comfort of her air-conditioned express train. If I had to name my favourite of all the networks I have mentioned it would be the London Underground, perhaps because the warm and familiar embrace of an Edwardian deep tube line on a cold evening is an evocative feeling for me. When you next get the chance to ride a train keep an eye out for the power infrastructure, and may the experience be as satisfying and comfortable as it so often is for me.
Header image: SPSmiler, Public domain.
“This is a trend reflected in many other countries with large railway networks, except sadly for the United States, which has electrified only a small proportion of its huge network.” — and Canada, which has not only zero electrified mainlines, it tore out the little bit of electrification that was performed in the 20th Century. At least the USA kept the northeast corridor.
Actually the US has kept a lot more rail in general. I think a majority of the trackage ever built in Canada has been torn up, including a crucial section of one of the transcontinental routes.
In this era when we all love to call out the USA for all their foibles, I want to call out my own country for somehow being worse. (Don’t get me started on VIA Rail. It’s like they set a goal to be worse than Amtrak. Yes, it IS possible to be worse than Amtrak.)
All of this to say– I’m both fascinated and incredibly envious of your observations, Jenny.
We call it “Damntrak” down here.
Both Canada and the US face two issues that are almost unique:
1) Population density. The US ranks 180th in the world (37/sq.km) and Canada 230th (4.5/sq. km). Japan (340), the UK (286), Germany (242), China (151), France (122) – pretty much any country with extensive rail service has a population density many times higher then either country.
2) Sheer size. Halifax to Vancouver is 4,444 km, while New York to Los Angeles 2,944 km. A Shinkansen travelling at top speed in a straight line will take about 14 hours to cross Canada, 9 hours to cross the US. Not only is it quite a bit faster to fly, the infrastructure required is significantly less expensive.
While both countries have limited geographical areas that have potential for high speed rail, the reality is that is neither country will have the extensive rail infrastructure of Europe, Japan, or China any time in the foreseeable future.
Oh, and I have ridden both Amtrak and Via. I’ll take Via any day.
Quicker to fly might just about be true on average in the US and Canada compared to a new high speed rail network if one existed there – especially when you only consider the actually flying part in isolation. However getting to and from the airport and all the stages in the airport before you go anywhere else with baggage, security etc and the real world cost to fly and maintain all that infrastructure required to do it…
A new high speed rail network in many cases you’d be able to walk or take other public transport like the local slower underground/branch line rails to the major train station much quicker than getting to the airport. And then it is just change trains and get comfortable (in a much more comfortable and quiet space) for a pretty darn fast, and energy efficient transit (so in a just world it would end up vastly cheaper too) to then again also have a probably shorter trip on the slower last mile networks at the other end.
Sure the train wouldn’t be travelling as fast as the aircraft in peak speed terms, but you get up to speed quicker in your journey and likely end up much closer to your destination, with less wasted time recovering your bags etc.. Which brings the cross over for total journey times to being most would end up at least comparable by the train and only the longest possible hops or ones that the rail network doesn’t have a direct route but your local airport does being clear winners for flying.
Though as the initial cost to build a high quality high speed rail network is substantial its not likely to be done unless the US government decides to fund it, and that doesn’t look likely any time soon. Longer term investments are pretty much only done by governments in today’s world, and with the huge upfront cost a rail network is definitively more of a long term investment.
The population density thing is what happens when you average out the US/Canada’s population over its entire landmass … which as pointed out is big. However, that assumes that people are evenly spread out along the country. We do in fact have several corridors where people live close together enough that HSR would be worth it; the Northeast, Cascadia, California, Midwest, and Toronto-Ontario come to mind. If we’re considering country size, China also has more land than the US (one of the first phrases some Chinese language classes often teach is “China is bigger than America”). HSR can absolutely work in a large country if you build it where lots of people need to move about. [Not Just Bikes] as a video explaining this, although he talks more about urbanism in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ
And unfortunately, many of those have expensive land and existing rail lines owned by race-to-the-bottom freight carriers.
California has a 10+ year old high speed rail project that may eventually run SF to LA. I say may because the project is massively behind schedule and over budget.
why we americans prefer to get our selves and our stuff searched, herded into flying sardine cans where they treat you like children, and then get charged to the point of poverty for the privilege is beyond me.
seems our railroads are mostly used for freight. so everything is set up to be slow and efficient on diesel-electric. retrofitting those trains with pantographs for pure electric should be straightforward (they can power off their engines for those stretches). but given the ranges they have to cover and the areas where there are no power grids to tap into, it makes sense why that conversion has never happened.
Not sure why people think we wouldn’t have a TSA for rail. As soon as a Tokyo happens, you’ll be taking off your shoes every time you get on a train.
We “love” “security” no matter how much stuff they miss or how many times they are proven to be ineffective.
Boy do I wish we ACTUALLY treated people like children instead of half-assing it.
“Sir, you are in boarding group D. Standing 2 inches away from the boarding gate while we are just now boarding group A is bad manners. Say you are sorry and go sit in-time out until I come get you.”
But nooooooo. That would make them feel bad.
So instead we let half of our systems operate at 40% efficiency so we don’t offend the jerks…
Fully 20% of passengers that use a wheelchair to get on the plane early also require one to get off.
Every argument about rail infrastructure in reference to density applies to highways as well. The fact is, we don’t care; we build them anyway. Somehow it works out.
That’s just not true.
Car passengers don’t have to batch up.
Most cars are not on a schedule.
Cars don’t generally block, trains do.
Road intersections are not outrageously expensive, hence rare. Rail switches $$$. Hence roads are much more fractal.
But your mind is made up…
Like I said in the photovoltaics thread:
‘Please kick the next swamp German lecturing the USA about trains square in the nuts.’
A good write up! Most folks don’t put a second thought into the logistics of getting around or the infrastructure needed to support it. I see it mentioned most often in defense white papers about CIKR attacks.
If they ever get the thorium based Small Modular Reactors ironed out we may start seeing the electrified rail model flipped on its head. Where the locomotives are putting power back into the system when they have a lighter load. Supposedly the SMRs can be fit onto a tractor trailer rig so its a small jump from there to a rail based system.
A thorium locomotive would be a decent intermediate step to getting Europe (and one day hopefully the U.S.) onto the same electrified rail system standard. It would also allow electrified trains to operate on unpowered rail systems as well as act as mobile backup generators during power outages/shortages. Its a pipe dream at this point though.
The reactor vessel of an SMR fits on a lorry. That leaves a lot of infrastructure around the reactor that is still very large and cumbersome.
Nuclear-powered trains were thought about in the 1960s. Look up the X-12. This weighed 360 tons and needed 15 axles.
I think France got it right: for their nuclear trains, they put the ‘nuclear’ part next to the track instead of on it.
That’s exactly the line of thinking you get from manager types who believe that, somehow, laws of physics are negotiable. The never-ending source of boondoggles.
TL;DR: Laws of physics are NOT in favour of putting unwieldy things onto moving things, if you can avoid them.
THE single reason why EVs remain net-positive compared to their ICE counterparts, EVEN if charged with 100% fossil fuel derived electricity, and despite their unwieldy battery pack is plain and simple: power stations stay put. This way, all the tech to eliminate emissions and/or improve efficiency isn’t watered down by unholy trade-offs due to size and/or weight constraints.
And track bound vehicles are, by far, the best candidates for external power sources, a.k.a.: minimal unwieldy bits PLUS all the benefits of stationary power sources.
Don’t forget about marine power. Shipboard engines are nearly indistinguishable from stationary ones, since the size and weight limits are much higher than for road or track vehicles.
I can’t decide if you have no imagination, or are a luddite.
I was speculating, not advocating for immediate implementation of nuclear power on rails. Nuke tech has come a long way in the last 50 years. Its short sighted at best not to push for a flexible power architecture, especially with a safer fuel. Refusing to “what if” simply because that’s the way its always been is how we got the bloated military industrial complex and those boondoggles you’re so worried about.
… no, it’s still a pass on this idea.
The cool thing about electricity-powered trains is that the power can be generated in any fashion, and switched easily. And it can be using excess capacity of generating stations, especially at off-peak times.
Little nukes? Sure – if it would be cost-effective, then implement as stationary self-contained, possibly modular units that can be relocated if required. Having the reactors on trains means the whole rail power infrastructure has to be able to receive and redistribute excess power from the trains, which is probably too complex and expensive to be feasible.
Also… SnowPiercer.
Do you speak to people this way in person?
Your tone is exceedingly condescending and demeaning.
That’s not a good look on anyone.
Small nuclear reactors have existed for decades, with one sized and with suitable output to power a train being not very far fetched at all. They also do potentially bring the advantages suggested, and in the case of locomotives you generally want them to be as heavy as you can possibly make them inside the loading gauge so they have some traction, so really its only the size of your existing rail infrastructure that would provide a limitation, and in most places not a very restrictive one really. In many ways very much comparable to a diesel locomotive where all the refining of the fuel is done elsewhere and the locomotive just has to turn it into power.
Nuclear power is actually pretty easy to scale down (though the best reactor types and fuels will change with scale), and none have great technical drawback in proper operation. Too costly perhaps and politically likely to be lethally radioactive no matter how safe even in catastrophic accidents this particular variety of reactor is. So I can’t see it ever happening, as nuclear as a concept just gets so much push back from the majority of the population who only think of scary bombs and that famous shoddy Soviet reactor and assume all power generation with the nuclear title are much the same thing…
Not only the voltage differs between the Netherlands and Belgium, but also the driving direction. The Netherlands has right-hand drive while Belgium drives on the left.
No they don’t? They’re both on the right side now.
Well, you forget some diesel+electric trains : you run on overhead electricity until the line stops and while running, you switch to the diesel generator inside the engine. Very practical on some old networks, but don’t forget to lower the pantograph : I known some train drivers that forget that and then were a bit annoyed to explain that they lost it thanks to the next low bridge/tunnel :-)
For freight at the bare minimum, I would like the rail system in the US to be improved, but the problem over here is economics.
Public commuter trains can just about get enough funding in large metropolitan areas (but not really because they’re generally poorly maintained and don’t pull in enough money to pay for themselves even when they charge), but without freight no one wants to maintain (much less expand) the longer lines and so we can’t really use passenger trains on those lines.
Worse, we can’t get any more freight on the rails and off the roads without first expanding the lines to reach more communities and second taxing the large trucks proportional to the damage they cause to the roads (said taxes being things like vehicle registration) because it will always be cheaper to do the entire journey in a semi (as opposed to just the final delivery) if the burden of road maintenance is equally shared by all users.
So for now most trains will continue to hug the coasts and long trips will be in the car or in the air.
“…pay for themselves…” is the root cause of the problem. We need to recognize as a society that environmentally and fiscally responsible modes of transit are beneficial to everyone, and then put our combined resources into making those happen. Caring for the common weal is pretty much the job of a society.
The idea is not that “every train trip must turn a profit”, it’s to provide the most good for the most people, while slowing the use of fuel and reducing emissions. All of which benefit all of us in one way or another.
yeah imo this is the bigger part of most transportation struggles in the US…it’s not that we don’t have enough investment in bus / train / boat, but that car / truck is so severely subsidized. people usually make economically-sensible decisions
That’s just not true…the Freight rail stuff.
By almost any measure US freight rail is better then Europe’s.
It’s basically a topography problem, you can optimize passenger or freight.
Buy your ticket, take your chances.
Freight rail is far from perfect.
Trucks fill the gap in flexibility everywhere.
Like rail takes loads barges can’t.
Also note:
Local commuter systems are always infected with politician nephew/niece syndrome.
Which is a persistent, repeated in many areas, problem with local government, not light rail itself.
Big problem in Germany, for example.
Just less bold then NYC…
During covid the NYC subway system found 2 checks going out for every actual employee.
Others never showed up (for decades), connected to corrupt local government.
That wouldn’t fly in Germany, but nepotism still required.
IMHO, As far as the US goes, we are stuck in the bronze age economics that doesn’t allow for proper modernization.
Translation – any network is as good as its connections. Transit hubs. This is where it gets into the bronze age economics – competing networks do NOT want to connect to each other. I believe this is called myopic monopoly, inability to see the growth beyond 3-year investment plans. The only way out of this is having average Sam’s taxes paying for such things, but taxes are ALREADY tied up subsidizing all kinds of Amtracks and their networks, so expanding anything will not fly well, more taxes (obviously, corporations are excluded from paying taxes – thank you, donald for making it crystal clear) for the average Sam, etc.
Japan had this EXACT (well, to a degree) situation in the 1960s, and they needed the way out, and they did – strategic long-term planning. It took them nearly 50 years to build up the combination of public-paid and private – and they forced private to connect with public, no negotiations. Hence, some sinkansen lines are public, some private, and they connect where they should, at the busiest intersections where they are needed. China learned from Japan and declared sinkansen on steroids, and they did just at thing, same story, much, much faster, busy hubs where they are needed the most, connecting routes.
What’s missing in the US is the will to acknowledge that we are not just 25 years, we are full 50 years behind Japan, not to mention EU countries. We are even behind Canada – they are planning high speed rail Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal (potentially Quebec City, too). With some proper planning they may even connect Detroit, which means they’ll link up with Chicago too. Have we had sane and thoughtful planners in the DC we’d, too, be planning high speed Buffalo – Boston, thus, allowing canadians to plan for the eventual linking up with THAT line, but we don’t and we won’t. Because airplanes is the New Monopoly that is about as bad as the Truckers Union and it won’t allow any alternatives. Bronze age economy. Nobody invents iron alloys because just no, not even to those who already mine and forge iron. Just no.
Canada is really just planning to match what you already have in the Acela Corridor– note no pesky mention of how fast the latest vaporware HSR project ALTO will go–and has been talking about it at least as long as California has been working on their HSR, with just as much result.
And hey, at least America still has a functioning freight network, at least compared to Canada.
That I agree to – but at the very least the speed rail is considered. Amtrak, what Amtrak, its CEO just stepped down, and he wasn’t the only one making sure Amtrak remains the monopoly at any cost necessary, even if it means we are stuck in the 1990s. How do I know? By talking to a retired Amtrak engineer, that’s how. He had a LOT of coarse words for the upper management, even though his retirement package is royal (compared with other industries). Engineer, not some kind of supervisor or manager faking himself as an engineer.
Our functioning cargo network is mostly sponsored by my taxes. Because competition is long gone. Northeast is really TWO megamonsters, Amtrak and CSX, anyone else is either a subsidiary of, ie, owned by, or strangled into local niches from which they absolutely CANNOT grow into anything (like Delaware’s lone cargo line that’s cornered into mostly insignificant routes that can’t compare with anything trucks can deliver better and faster).
Concidence has it I chanced to personally speak to one of the few (now retired) canadian engineers who mastered the logistics in the 1970s and 1980s . This was long before Via Rail, and they’ve handled not just the southeast, but entire rail to Vancouver. According to him, they had tough time competing with what US had at the time, the most technologically advanced network of MANY companies, and Canada could only match that with proper planning, which they actually did. Rewind to present, when I had the conversation with him, and he, too, acknowledged that both Canada and the US now suck about as badly, though, canadian public transit was what kept things humming along, whereas US went completely private (cars) and that about introduced built-in cap on growth (one can only build that many roads to accommodate that many cars … cars in general are not exactly very efficient – too much space taken by empty cars with one driver, for example, more roads are needed, whereas a humble bus that sits under 50 will easily outperform 50 cars in total – and be SAFER, too, etc). Why am I bringing this up? Because he is still around (btw, even after retirement, he teaches at McGill, he is a professor) and the talent and the expertise is there, all it takes is proper planning that makes things happen (and hires the RIGHT people for the job, not managers, not ubermensch politicians, not talkers about politicians who usually ride these gravy trains to better their careers).
@author
Southern France uses 1.5KV DC not 3KV DC
3KV DC is used in Italy (the whole network except for the high speed lines which use 25KV AV 50 Hz)
You can get the whole European picture in this nice article (in Italian)
https://scalaenne.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/tensioni-ferroviarie-europee/
Also it’s a while that https://www.openrailwaymap.org can show the lines in different colours by speed/gauge/electrical power and so on. Just select the appropriate filter from the menu.
Is worth to mention that Italy pioneered the the threephase power train (with two overhead wires) from 1902 and lasted in few north/western lines until 1976 (I was there when the last line was switched to 3KV )
It was not a simple problem to run AC trains in an era w/o inverters/choppers and other electronics, but the problem was solved brilliantly using some tricks.
There is an English wikipedia page about the argument, but is way more effective to look at the italin one and translate it with an online translator
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trazione_trifase
Ho appena letto questo (e gli altri articoli sui treni). Sito figo!
https://rollingsteel.it/come-funziona-locomotiva-avviatori-automatici-motori-a-spazzole-e-reostati/
Fun map, but it ignores electrification in Eastern Europe (mostly 25 kV 50 Hz). It falsely lumps large chunks under the grey “non electrificata” label. Wikipedia has a better map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_kV_AC_railway_electrification
Well “not covered” would have been a better legend. But I also posted the link to openrailwaymap for a reason.
There you can get info, not just about the main railways, but also about the uncommon ones, like light railways, trams, narrow gauge lines and so on.
You can get also info about the various safety systems and signaling (which is another big pandora vase)
Nice to see railway electrification get some attention. Even among train nerds it often gets overlooked.
There’s a brilliant and highly detailed Wikipedia article actually about Amtrak’s north east corridor (called something like “the Amtrak 25Hz System”) that was so good I decided to try and slowly fill up Wikipedia articles about British railway lines that had almost no information on the topic.
This lead me down the rabbit hole of the interesting ways electrified railways interact with national electricity grids. Old school low voltage DC systems from before WW2, typically operate their own high voltage 3-phase AC distribution systems. Southern England is actually criss-crossed by a large network of (mostly) 33kV lines operated by the railway that connect to utility grid at around 36 locations (most of which are 132kV substations). Transport for London operate a ring network across the city at 22kV connecting to grid supplies at about 6 or 7 locations as well as a backup power station at Greenwich, these are then transformed down to a network of 11kV lines that follow the routes of Underground lines powering the DC traction substations. The network probably also powers the DLR, maybe the trams, and also domestic supplies for TfL run railway stations on other railways (like Elizabeth Line).
The low frequency AC lines are of course most exciting with the German single phase transmission network also spanning Austria and Switzerland at voltages of 110kV or 132kV. But there’s a similar situation on the North East Corridor (south of new york) where the 12kV 25hz system is supported by 132kV single phase distribution lines located on the same electrification masts as the OLE! An arrangement that, i think, is completely unique.
One of the main savings around the modern standard of 25kV at utility frequency is that it doesn’t require the railway to set up and maintain it’s own distribution network since the traction voltage is high enough that substations can be set far enough apart to receive power directly from the public utility. That higher voltage also means power can be moved around the railway using overhead lines, so they system operates two functions simultaneously, distributing power across moderately long distances and powering trains. (Older systems were also put in place in a context where the public utility grid may not have fully existed).
The 25kV mains frequency system has it’s own challenges though, in that it is a single phase system while the grid is a three phase system. This means it has to connect to the grid at 132kV at least, oftentimes even at 275 or 400kV, typically the highest voltages used. This is so that the draw on a that single phase is not too much to disbalance the grid. Also, subsequent grid connections are connected to different phases to provide some balance that way. This has the consequence of different electrification sections having to be completely insulated from one another (lest the phases are allowed to short circuit), and for trains to be able to coast between sections unpowered and without creating an arc. In addition, 25kV trains are more expensive are heavier than low voltage counterparts because they must carry a transformer and rectifier themselves.
BTW 25KV (50Hz) trains are lighter than 15KV (16.66Hz) ones used in Germanophon countries, because transformers get more efficient at higher frequencies, so smaller ones can be used.
Perhaps on bi/multistandard trains, the AC transformer is often reused as a DC filter, so is not all wasted weight.
The Tyneside area light rail system (The Metro) has 1.5kVDC overhead line power, unique in the UK I believe.
Ehh. story goes that on the Amsterdam Brussels line NS (Dutch railways) made a deal with NMBS (Belgian railways): NS pays for the passenger cars and NMBS would take care of the locomotives… Then when demand had picked up and it was time to make the trains longer (more passenger cars) NMBS said: All yours!
So technically the locomotives on Amsterdam Brussels are al Belgian.
Hmm. This is probably out of date: I just checked images of the train and I saw lots of other/new material (and not the locomotives I thought were pulling that line).
That locomotive is in NS colours, so I went with that. The on-train staff are all Belgian though. These slow trains have a loco at each end and use old 1980s NS rakes of coaches. I quite like them, though the high-speed line has those new Dutch units.
I always wondered why the London underground used a fourth rail… now I know :-)
We don’t have trains in my country, you insensitive clods.
“because their lower voltage gives them less available energy for the same current.”
Power, not energy.
This is basic EE.
Please correct it.
they’re dealing with the same 24 hours in the day so it seems like energy is restricted as well
energy per 24 hours is still power, not energy.
Trains don’t drive 24/7 so at times they are consuming no power and other times they might be doing regenerative braking. So it doesn’t make sense to see it as an energy limit.
“because their lower voltage gives them less available energy for the same current.”
“Power, not energy.
This is basic EE.
Please correct it.”
a) Energy is the capacity to do work. Energy is power integrated over time.
one joule = one watt-second
b)Power is the rate at which work is done, or energy is transmitted.
watt = joules/second
Energy and power are closely related but are not the same physical quantity. Energy is the ability to cause change; power is the rate energy is moved, or used.
(c) P=ΔE / Δt
P is the average power output, measured in watts (W)
ΔE is the net change in energy of the system in joules (J) – also known as work.
Δt is the duration – how long the energy use takes – measured in seconds (s)…
Multiplying a value of power and the period of time over which it is used gives an amount of energy. This is why you pay your power company for the amount of energy used per unit time period, and NOT for the amount of power available [a kilowatt is a unit of power but a kilowatt-hour (1 kilowatt times 1 hour) is a unit of energy. ]
This is not only basic EE, but basic physics.
Please correct it.
“Please correct it.”
1) my comment is not wrong, EE is part of physics.
2) you cannot edit comments on hackaday
3) your comment looks like AI-generated
Part of EE is physics.
All engineering is multidisciplinary.
Much too complicated for most physicists.
They just can’t think that flexibly.
Engineering is made up of:
Applied practical knowledge, most from science, but much from trail and error.
Math.
Business/finance.
Art.
You have to be a good engineer to get to ‘art’.