I’m working on a report on energy and I have statistics for TOE (tons of oil equivalent) and GW and I would rather use just one unit of measurment throughout my paper. Are there any websites, or any energy people who could convert for me? Is this even possible?
20,162 TOE = ??? GW
TOE is a unit of energy, while Watt is a unit of effect. The Joule is the SI unit for energy.
According to Wikipedia, IEA and OECD define one TOE as equal to 41.868 GJ. This means that your 20162 TOE is equal to 844 142.616 GJ, or ≈844 terajoules or 234 gigawatt hours.
To clarify the difference between energy and power (what Tom P. is referring to as “effect”): Energy is the ability to do work, while power is the ability to do work per time. So, for instance, we can speak about the amount of power a horse has: It has one horsepower. But we can’t really say how much work a horse can do: Maybe a horse can do enough work in a week to plow one field. But then it could also do enough work to plow two fields, if it spent two weeks doing it. Or it could do enough work to plow 52 fields, if it spent a whole year, and so on. TOE measures an amount of energy, so it’s equivalent to the number of fields to be plowed. Gigawatts are a unit of power, so it’s in the same category as horsepower. So you could say how many gigawatts a horse has, but you can’t say how many TOE a horse has, unless you also say how much time you’re letting the horse take.