
Many people violate the definitions of power and energy. Some people do it publicly, thereby misleading unfortunate readers. Below is a short list of some of these violators. If you know another site, book, journal, etc. please add it to this list. If you want someone to check out a dubious definition or comment about power and energy, or if your site is on this list and you rebuke the claim of violation, please add your comment to the discussion tab. If your site is on this list and you have fixed it, congratulations and thank you, please feel free to move your site to the removed site list or just ask on the discussion tab. Remember, in short, Energy equals Power multiplied by Time, where:
See Electricity basics and Power and energy for more information.

The top entry in the hall of shame goes to Howstuffworks.com. Their error is on the first page of how hydropower plants work. I have emailed them about this, as well as other errors, to no avail. Now they have become the winner of the Hall of Shame - Power vs. Energy.
| A violation of Power and Energy from Howstuffworks.com along with a logically and mathematically equivalent sentence in everyday analogous units. | |
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| What Howstuffworks.com says. | The equivalent sentence. |
| The world's hydropower plants output a combined total of 675,000 megawatts, the energy equivalent of 3.6 billion barrels of oil, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. | According to Seaworldtm the average cruising speed of a hammerhead shark is 2.85 miles/hour the equivalent to the distance around the earth at the equator. |
Currently no Hall of Shame sites have fixed their erroneous content. Please feel free to email the sites about their deeds.
HowStuffWorks says the world's hydropower output is approximately 675,000 MW. This is consistent with data published by worldenergy.org, and is roughly equivalent to 340 dams of 2,000 MW each. Hoover Dams. (Note HowStuffWorks referred to the term "output" which is sometimes used interchangeably in industry as "capacity".) Total hydro generation according to world energy is about 2,633 TWh in 1999, resulting in a respectable average capacity factor of 43% (2,633 TWh / (675,000 MW * 8760 hrs/yr) ).
Assuming one MWh is the energy equivalent of 1.7 barrels of oil, then hydro generation is equivalent to roughly 1.5 billion barrels of oil. Looks like where they went wrong with the calculation is they assumed hydro plants run 100% of the time. If hydro plants did run all the time, that would be 3.5 billion barrels of oil however. ~lori g. Hydro plants can only run when there is water behnd them. If the generation capacity of the dam was equal to the average flow of the river then it could run at 100% capacity all the time. In practice the generation capacity of most dams is higher so they can generate more electricty when demand is higher (during the day) and balance this by running at part load when demand is low (e.g. at night).
| License | CC-BY-SA-3.0 |
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| Cite as | Lonny (2006–2025). "Power and energy hall of shame". Appropedia. Retrieved October 1, 2026. |