Talk:List of countries by electricity consumption

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Countries

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Energy High‑importance

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Lists Mid‑importance

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Per capita

Unfortunately energy consumption is given in the table as a number of watts. This actually means that what's shown on the table is a RATE of energy consumption averaged over a year! VERY confusing to the average reader and quite confusing to many people such as me who have some technical background. People are accustomed to energy usage being stated in kilowatt-hours. This makes much more sense since it states energy, not power (rate of energy use). Energy consumption figures are IMPORTANT. PLEASE make this table more intelligible by changing the units from power to energy units! By the way, to convert the power numbers in the table back to energy, simply multiply by the hours in a year which = 365.25X24. Note that this accurately states that there are 365.25 days in a year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidr222 (talk • contribs) 02:26, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A list describing consumption per capita would be much more relevant. Joffeloff 22:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, this has been done. Now the gluttony of my home country is clear to the world. Thankee. :) Joffeloff 14:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but wouldn't a separate article be interesting anyway, so you can see who's on top and all? Evilbu 18:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the table heading for "consumption" is incorrect. The numbers in that column appear to be in units of megawatt-hours, not the stated gigawatt-hours. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.59.246 (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure you are not confusing MW and GW-h/year ? 1 MW = 8.766 GW-h/y (number of hours in a year divided by 1000)? Xenonice (talk) 20:28, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think a review of the figures is in order as there may be errors. For example, simply divide the total consumption for the U.S. listed by the population listed and you don't come up with the per capita usage that's listed - not even close! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.91.162.239 (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A formula is now given but the column heading is poor. "Average...per capita" is tautology. Unless we mean average per hour, in which case let's rename it "Hourly consumption per capita".Sqgl (talk) 10:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the current power per capita a bit misleading? Does it take industry in account? Countries with a lot of heavy industries use more power than countries that don't have this. (Vanderhavecn (talk) 02:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC))[reply]

The purpose of listing power per capita is to normalize the figures for population, not to represent the resources used directly by a typical individual, so I think this is acceptable. If someone has a good way to normalize for industrialization though, that might also be interesting (not as a replacement for the straight per capita figures though). Evzob (talk) 10:29, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The change to using kWh for everything has made this page somewhat confusing because it does not define over how long of a period anywhere. It's implied that it's per-year, but that is not explicit. If a unit of energy like kWh is go be used for consumption in the table headers, a denominator unit should be added eg: "kWh/year". Pxtl (talk) 15:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does the (·) in (GW·h/yr) have any meaning ?

is it just for separation or is it something else like (x) ? 196.176.60.104 (talk) 20:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is a multiplication symbol, something like (x). Sometimes when you combine units, it is hard to see that they are combined. Gah4 (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

and the (/) is meant to mean per year not an actual division sign ? 196.176.60.104 (talk) 23:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It means per because it is an actual division sign. Maybe not in Wikipedia, but you also find -1 superscript, or to the -1 power, which is another way to write division. Gah4 (talk) 06:43, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for the explanation 196.178.91.240 (talk) 15:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Calculation errors

I happened to stumble upon some inconsistencies here. From my understanding, all data, as total consumption in GWh/y, is sourced from EIA (except for the case of Liechtenstein which is supposedly sourced from the CIA???) while the per capita columns are merely calculated by the given formulas. However, these formulas don't explain all values! I tested this with china and it's correct except for the rounding error in the per capita Watts column:

China 7,806,000 GWh/y 1,425,893,504 5,474 kWh 624 W -> 7806000*10^6/1425893504=5474 kWh/y; 7806000*10^6*0.114077116/1425893504=625 W

Like China, most columns seem roughly correct but there are outliers such as Benin and Saint Pierre and Miquelon with the latter being off orders of magnitudes.

Benin 500 GWh/y 12,996,901 101 kWh 12 W -> 500*10^6/12996901=38 kWh/y; 500*10^6*0.114077116/12996901=4.3 W Saint Pierre and Miquelon 44.64 GWh/y 850,890 7,479 kWh 853 W -> 44.64*10^6/850890=52 kWh/y; 44.64*10^6*0.114077116/850890=6 W

Other countries which seem odd are: US, Nigeria, Sudan, Luxembourg, Afghanistan, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Niger, Malawi, Burundi, Somalia, Eritrea, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Cook Islands, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Niue, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

I noticed because I needed a table of average country wattage and just to be sure, I calculated it from total as well as from per-capita Krumonset (talk) 10:09, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Site vs Source Energy

Can we have a clarification somewhere as to whether we are talking about site energy (end use) or source energy (primary energy)? I don't see these terms anywhere in this article. Greenhistoria (talk) 01:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Complete update

I re-did the whole table using data from Ember. I took out the columns about population, and the Watts column. Per-capita alone is fine, and Watt-hours are the standard unit found in sources.

I also replaced the picture with a stacked area chart, that hopefully shows the growth of Asia in a more obvious way. The predictions about China being a third of the world and half of Asia already came true, so I moved those to the lead.

Let me know if there are any further changes that should be made. I did most of this via R scripting, hopefully reducing the effort required. Wizmut (talk) 10:14, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]