To determine how many households can be served by the power station, we can divide the total electricity generated by the power station by the average electricity consumption of a household.
Given:
- Average electricity consumption per household: \( 1.04 \times 10^4 \) kWh
- Total electricity generated by the power station: \( 2.496 \times 10^{10} \) kWh
Now we can calculate the number of households served:
\[ \text{Number of households} = \frac{\text{Total electricity generated}}{\text{Average electricity consumption per household}} \]
Substituting in the values:
\[ \text{Number of households} = \frac{2.496 \times 10^{10} \text{ kWh}}{1.04 \times 10^{4} \text{ kWh}} \]
Calculating this:
\[ \text{Number of households} = \frac{2.496 \times 10^{10}}{1.04 \times 10^{4}} = \frac{2.496}{1.04} \times 10^{10 - 4} \]
\[ \frac{2.496}{1.04} \approx 2.4 \quad \text{and} \quad 10^{10 - 4} = 10^{6} \]
So,
\[ \text{Number of households} \approx 2.4 \times 10^{6} \]
Therefore, the power station can serve approximately 2.4 million households.