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? Write your answer in scientific notation, expressed to the exact decimal place.

Answer 1

To find the number of households that can be served by the power station, we need to divide the total energy generated by the power station by the energy used by an average household.

Let's calculate this:
Number of households = Total energy generated / Energy used by an average household

Number of households = (2.496 x 10^10 kWh) / (1.04 x 10^4 kWh)

To divide these numbers, we need to subtract the exponents of the powers of 10:
Number of households = 2.496 x 10^10 / 1.04 x 10^4

When dividing, we subtract exponents: 10^10 / 10^4 = 10^(10-4) = 10^6

Now we divide the coefficients: 2.496 / 1.04 = 2.4

Number of households = 2.4 x 10^6

Therefore, the power station can serve approximately 2.4 x 10^6 households.