How I see it.Consider this: When the cell starts, voltage is extremely low as there is a lot of golden surface for electrons to escape in the solution and oxidize gold in a zone as described.
I can imagine and am pretty sure that at this time the most gold is stripped. As lesser surface remains available after some time, the voltage rizes. With the current staying maxed out at it's setting.
I find it hard to believe that when most gold is stripped which makes the voltage rize, also more gold per watt will be stripped.
Current still running at max setting.
According to your theory: the power consumption is greater after most of the easy to get gold is stripped, but i'm pretty sure at the beginning the most gold per Amp is stripped.
The voltage rizes once it is harder to get the current off the stripped parts.
This would mean less gold per Amp per Second.
That is the opposite of what you're trying to prove or figure out with watts.
It's the high resistance of copper to concentated H2SO4 making the voltage rise. Until there is no more current.
My 2 cents.![]()
The voltage rises until the amps reach the level that they are set to.
Once the amps start going below their limit the voltage can rise.
It will rise until it's limit is reached and then as it can go no further everything basically stops.
So when there is no gold the voltage will max then the amps go down because the resistance is above that and no current can flow.
So both need to be set to some limit to keep the reaction below a particular temperature.
One of the things I think I did wrong at the start is I didn't restrict the amps so they went really high and I am thinking that that increased the temperature even just locally (there wasn't that much material there) to the point where the copper was starting to get stripped.
I also walked away and it just did wtf it liked.