2010-07-21-GasMetering

Now, what percentage of the population know what a Therm is let alone its relation to other measurements of energy you might otherwise come across?

I bet you don't and if you do a quick poll of those around you, you'll find none of them do either.

For the average householder, the most common energy usage is electricity which is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). Wouldn't it be nice if you could see your usage in the same measurement base for both of your common household forms of energy? Then you might be able to do something like compare prices and usage efficiently rather than having to rely on Google (although it doesn't understand Therms either, you have to convert to BTU first and that only works if you know how many BTU are in a Therm). As many of you already know, one of the great things about SI units is that the common bases mean it's easy to compare between different items and a Watt is a Watt no matter where in the world you are.

With the hopes of encouraging PG&E to use something reasonable I sent the following letter:

I just looked up my gas usage using your smart meter system and got a rather annoying surprise. For some odd reason you're displaying in Therms, a unit of measure that is not commonly used and I have no way of relating to.

Could you please show gas data in kWh so it can be easily related to kWh as quoted for electricity?

At a minimum, it'd be nice if you stuck to the international system of units and either quoted usage in Watts or Joules.

Thanks, Paul

For the curious, a Therm is 29.30 kWh. After 2 decimal places, it depends on which of the 3 different definitions of Therm you're using as to the value.