About this episode

This episode explores the basics of energy and power, including key concepts like watts and the power grid.

As we catch up from summer vacation, we’re bringing you a favorite from the Shift Key archive. We’ll be back in your feed with more fresh episodes starting next week. What is the difference between energy and power? How does the power grid work? And what’s the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour? On this week’s episode, we answer those questions and many, many more. This was the start of Shift Key Summer School, a series of introductory “lecture conversations” meant to cover the basics of energy and the power grid for listeners of every experience level and background. In less than an hour, Rob and former Shift Key co-host Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, try to get you up to speed on how to think about energy, power, horsepower, volts, amps, and what uses (approximately) 1 watt-hour, 1 kilowatt-hour, 1 megawatt-hour, and 1 gigawatt-hour. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News. You can find a full transcript of the episode here . Mentioned: Decarbonize Your Life -- This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by … Verse’s software platform Aria helps data centers connect to the…

People in this episode

Host: Robinson Meyer

Guest: Jesse Jenkins

Topics covered

• energy
• power
• power grid
• energy systems
• education
• clean energy

Keywords

• watt
• megawatt
• power grid
• energy systems
• kilowatt-hour
• megawatt-hour
• gigawatt-hour
• energy education

Sponsors

Verse

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Heatmap News, Princeton University

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