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.