• Question: How many AA batteries does it take to power the UK for one day/year/month?

    Asked by to Hannah, James, Meggi, Olivia, Oli, Paul, Saiful on 4 Jan 2017. This question was also asked by , , .
    • Photo: Paul Shearing

      Paul Shearing answered on 4 Jan 2017:

      In a ‘normal’ alkaline AA battery, you probably have about 2.6Wh (Watt Hours )of energy (i.e. they can provide 2.6 Watts of power for an hour). According to the UK government in 2014 in the UK we used 2249 TWh (Tera Watt Hours, where one terra watt hour is one trillion watt hours)

      In mathematical terms we would write:

      2249TWh = 2249 000 000 000 000 Wh

      So for a whole year we would need 865 trillion AA batteries, or just over 2 trillion AA batteries per day!

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