Gigawatts, Megawatts and so on . . .

[roddy]

Added 兆瓦.

[Glenn]

So that's equal to 1000千瓦? I don't get it. It seems like 兆瓦 would be a terawatt (TW)...

[Edit] I think I might be misunderstanding something. Wikipedia says 10^12 W = TW = 兆瓦, but it looks like the OP says it's equal to 1000千瓦.

[roddy]

Checking my dictionary, it has 兆 as meaning a trillion traditionally. Perhaps it still has that meaning in Japan?

[Glenn]

It definitely means "a trillion" in Japan (一兆五千億円(园/圓) and whatnot), but I got that figure off of the Chinese Wikipedia page... and wow, I just noticed something. I had converted it to the Taiwanese version, where 兆瓦 is indeed 10^12 W = TW, but on the non-converted page it shows as 10^6 W = MW. Well... this could be confusing.

http://zh.wikipedia....dia.org/wiki/兆瓦

http://zh.wikipedia....ia.org/zh-tw/瓦特

[Edit] I just noticed that MDBG also has it as "megawatt". I guess Taiwan's special.

[carlo]

I've been dealing with a couple of power projects recently, everyone was using 兆瓦 to mean Megawatt = 1000 kw. I've heard and seen 吉瓦 for Gigawatt (ie. 1000 MW). These guys should know: they run power plants....

[roddy]

So 1亿千瓦 is 100GW. But I'm not that powerful yet (edit: I am now, just saw it!)

And again! I love this post, I refer to it at least once a month.

[roddy]

Added 10亿千瓦, which is 1,000GW or 1TW - which sounds theoretical but is actually China's installed capacity as of end of 2012.

[Shelley]

Slightly off topic but in the same vein has anyone got any sensible translations for megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc.

 

There is supposed to be a new definition of kilobyte, it is supposed to be 1024 but apparently there is now consensus of opinion that it will be 1000.

 

Does this change the higher values too? ie megabyte is supposed to be 1024 kilobytes so has this also changed to 1000 kilobytes.

[imron]

There is supposed to be a new definition of kilobyte, it is supposed to be 1024 but apparently there is now consensus of opinion that it will be 1000.

Since when?

[Shelley]

I read it in New Scientist or Scientific America, I haven't been able to find the article yet but as soon as I do i will let you know.

[Shelley]

http://www.whatsabyte.com/

 

This explains it quite well.

[imron]

That's far from consensus that kilobytes should be 1000 instead of 1024.

[Shelley]

The article i read ine New scientist or Scientific America said that it was replacing 1024 with 1000. Wish I could find it

[imron]

Regardless, there will still be plenty of dissenting opinion and habit is hard to change.  I don't see it changing anytime soon.

[Shelley]

I agree it won't taken up by most people.

[Shelley]

If anyone is interested I found out these:

 

Kilobyte  qian zi jie   千字节

 

Megabyte  zhao zi jie   兆字节    (pleco describes this as 2 to power of 20 or approx 1 million bytes)

 

gigabyte ji zi jie   吉字节  (also described by pleco as 2 to the power of 30 or approx 1 billion bytes)

 

terabyte zhao zhao zi jie 兆兆字节

 

Not sure why it is only approximate, maybe this to is some kind of rounding up/down going on.

[roddy]

I still love this topic and use it every few months. I hereby bump it so everyone can share. 

[roddy]

Just saw my first xxx亿千瓦 figure, so that's in the xx terawatt range. Couldn't let the occasion go unmarked by a quick bump for my all-time most referred to topic...

 

Just checked and total global installed capacity is 6 petawatts (6,000 tw) give or take. This topic could run for decades yet.

[roddy]

Just a bump to this much-loved topic to let you know I've added 吉瓦, Gigawatt, as mentioned by carlo in 2012. I came across it in a translation and realised I hadn't added it to the first post. 

[roddy]

On 8/14/2014 at 10:31 AM, roddy said:

Added 10亿千瓦, which is 1,000GW or 1TW - which sounds theoretical but is actually China's installed capacity as of end of 2012.

This is now (approximately) China's total installed capacity for coal-fired power alone, if anyone's interested....