The fact is, even for technical people, approximations and hand waving are great as starting points. They set expectations.
Good approximations do this. If you say a proposed wind farm is going to produce enough energy to power 100,000 homes that means something even if I don't know how much energy the average home uses you can still think ~small city worth of power. You can also say electric bill is ~100$ / month so that's 120million / year worth of electricity even if your units are off it's going to be in the right ballpark.
However, if you say it's enough to power 1,000,000 light bulbs that's both ambiguous and not really useful. Because you both wonder if it's 60w or 100w, is that 24/7 or a few hours a day, and you probably don't really know how many light bulbs are in your house or how much energy they use. (TV's and other devices are even more ambiguous.) So, you can't get how much energy that is directly or indirectly.
PS: I still want hard numbers, somewhere even if there not a major part of the presentation.
Good approximations do this. If you say a proposed wind farm is going to produce enough energy to power 100,000 homes that means something even if I don't know how much energy the average home uses you can still think ~small city worth of power. You can also say electric bill is ~100$ / month so that's 120million / year worth of electricity even if your units are off it's going to be in the right ballpark.
However, if you say it's enough to power 1,000,000 light bulbs that's both ambiguous and not really useful. Because you both wonder if it's 60w or 100w, is that 24/7 or a few hours a day, and you probably don't really know how many light bulbs are in your house or how much energy they use. (TV's and other devices are even more ambiguous.) So, you can't get how much energy that is directly or indirectly.
PS: I still want hard numbers, somewhere even if there not a major part of the presentation.