West Fremont is a community of 3,000 homes. A coal burning power plant supplies electricity for the town. The capacity of the plant is 12 megawatts, and the average household consumes 8,000 kilowatt hours a year. Assuming that the power plant can operate at full capacity for 8,000 hours a yera, how many kWh of electricity can be produced by the plant in a year?
I'm not sure how to take the 12 megawatts, which is the plant's capacity and convert it into kWh. And I don't know how the 8,000 hours a year fits into the equation. Would you be able to offer an explanation?
Sure! I can help you with that. Let's break it down step by step.
First, let's convert the plant's capacity from megawatts (MW) to kilowatts (kW). Since 1 megawatt is equal to 1,000 kilowatts, the plant's capacity of 12 megawatts can be converted to 12,000 kilowatts (12 MW * 1,000 kW/MW = 12,000 kW).
Now, to calculate the total amount of electricity the plant can produce in a year, we need to multiply its capacity by the number of hours it can operate at full capacity. In this case, the plant can operate at full capacity for 8,000 hours a year.
To get the total electricity production in kilowatt hours (kWh), we can multiply the plant's capacity in kilowatts by the number of hours it operates:
Total electricity production = Capacity (kW) * Hours of operation
Therefore, the total electricity production in a year would be:
Total electricity production = 12,000 kW * 8,000 hours = 96,000,000 kWh
So, the plant can produce 96,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a year.
Now, let's consider the average household consumption of 8,000 kilowatt hours per year. To find out how many homes the plant can supply, we need to divide the total electricity production by the average consumption per household:
Number of homes supplied = Total electricity production / Average household consumption
Number of homes supplied = 96,000,000 kWh / 8,000 kWh = 12,000 homes
Therefore, the power plant can supply electricity for 12,000 homes in West Fremont.