An average American household uses about 1.04 x 10^4 kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity a year. If a power station generates 2.496 x 10^10 kWh per year, how many households can it serve?

Answer 1

To find out how many households a power station can serve, we need to divide the total generated electricity by the average electricity consumption per household.

Let's perform the calculation:

$$\text{Number of households}=\frac{\text{Total electricity generated}}{\text{Electricity used by one household}}=\frac{2.496\times {10}^{10}\text{ kWh}}{1.04\times {10}^4\text{ kWh}}$$

Now we will calculate the division:

$$=\frac{2.496}{1.04}\times \frac{{10}^{10}}{{10}^4}=2.396153846\times {10}^6$$

$$\frac{{10}^{10}}{{10}^4}={10}^{10-4}={10}^6$$

Now we can round or approximate $\frac{2.496}{1.04}$:

$$\frac{2.496}{1.04}\approx 2.396$$

Thus, the total number of households is approximately:

$$2.396\times {10}^6\approx 2,396,000$$

Therefore, the power station can serve approximately 2,396,000 households.