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star trek - How much energy could the Enterprise-D produce?


Just watched TNG: The Dauphin. In it the following exchange occurs when receiving a powerful transmission:




Data Sir, sensors indicate the communication originated from a tera-Watt source on the planet
Riker That's more power than our entire ship can generate!



This seems silly.



  • There is currently a hydro power station that produces 22.5GW. 50 times that seems very large to us today, but when you consider the biggest nuclear weapons can release 0.5TWh, the numbers don't seem that extreme.

  • Shields! Phasers! 150KW defensive laser systems exist. A 1PW laser accelerator is a thing. Those on the enterprise must —by virtue of needing to go much further and charge much faster— need more power.

  • Transporters! Replicators! The holodeck! Surely the converstion of energy into matter and arranging that at distance, must pull a lot of power. And it's happening all over the ship, all the time.

  • Impulse engines. Even in a vacuum, shifting 4.5 megatonnes must take serious power. To accelerate 1m/s over a second, you're looking at 45GW and they seem to do things much faster, all the way up to 75,000,000m/s. Full impulse seems to take a few seconds... That makes my calculator cry, with numbers around 8 ×10^24W... That's way over.


  • Warp.

  • Computer.


All of that, while keeping the lights on running other day-to-day things.


Was Riker just off by a unit, or is there something I'm not factoring into these points? How much energy could the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D produce at peak output? Are there listed energy requirements for the components above that I've been guesstimating for?




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