While I agree, most people know tera- at this point. Most people probably do not know zetta- yet.
Most of us arenโt used to โterrawattsโ though. Is that like one Earth worth of watts? One watt as measured on Earth? The definition of watt culturally accepted by Earthlings?
You wouldnโt find a terawatt in everyday usage, but a terawatt-hour is pretty commonplace when talking about the energy usage of entire populations.
This Reuters article states US power demand will climb to โ4,027 billion kWh in 2022.โ Yeah, just say 4 PWh. Or even 4,027 TWh. Itโs a little more easily digested.
Itโs already an incomprehensably high number. No matter which way you state it is going to fly over peoples heads.
And the entire electricity consumption of the planet is something like 25.5 petawatt-houts.
Oh thatโs super interesting and I did not know that, but I was riffing off the double R in โterrawatt,โ instead of โterawatt.โ
Like โteraโ describes an order of magnitude, but โterraโ means โearth,โ as in โterra firma,โ โterra nova,โ or โterran.โ
So I guess you could say that 25.5 petawatt-hours = 25,500 terawatt-hours = 1 terrawatt-hour.
