I’m setting up my HUD and have searched for this but don’t understand the differences. Also, doesn’t the ride show us some of these stats at the end? And knowing these stats during the ride, what changes would I make to my ride?
Also, I’m assuming Power Balance- L/R indicates the pressure on each pedal so that I can adjust to a smoother peddling stroke. Is that correct?
Thank you.
Weighted power = normalised power
What a useless reply. Don’t you think I did that?
I know that but what is the difference between normalized and average? I don’t know what this means
Average Power is the power u have throughout a ride, combined when u stop pedaling. So if u descending, your average power will get lower. Weighted/Normalized Power takes that in consideration. Like if u were riding up a hill at 300W and descending with no power, u had to put more energy into that effort, so the weighted power is something like 205W instead of 150W average power. The more u sprint, accelerate, ride uphill, the more is your gap between avg and normalized power. When you are riding consistently, its usually almost the same.
Funnily enough, given that you already described my reply as “useless” (did you even click on the link?) I feel no great motivation to spend any more of my time in this thread. 
Thank you Andreas. If average power is the same as weighted power? If so, why does the HUD give us a choice? Is it just for information? Also, Power Balance is to help you to adjust how you ride?
I didn’t need to click on the link as I had already clicked on many links. I was looking for an answer. I don’t need help with google. That was just insulting.
To be fair, you can find the difference between weighted power and average power using google as well. You can even see how it’s calculated compared to how average power is calculated.
David was probably making the assumption that you were used to seeing the term Normalized Power, which is what some platforms use more traditionally, so someone who already understood normalized power might not have heard it called weighted power. So I don’t believe he was trying to be insulting. If someone is used to calculating normalized power they might wonder if weighted power is exactly the same, similar, or vastly different than normalized power.
Edit: Also note, that Zwift likely has to use a different term than Normalized Power because that is trademarked by Peaksware LLC (which owns TrainingPeaks). This is similar to why they likely need to rebrand TSS to use the term “Stress Points” instead - again TSS is a term trademarked by Peaksware LLC.
Thank you Aaron. So many people diminish a question that they see as basic but somebody like me doesn’t understand. So I likely owe David an apology. Men can be quite insulting and rude to women on these forums. I don’t know anything about normalized power. I don’t race on Zwift and don’t understand these terms. Zwift doesn’t do a good job of explaining to the uninitiated what these things are. They make a bunch of assumptions about what they think people should know and they are so wrong. I’ve been on Zwift for over 7 years and there is a lot I don’t understand. And new Zwifters are still very confused by it all. It’s quite cliquey in that way and I think that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry I asked this question.
Honestly it’s not a bad question. I think I asked the same question when I saw “weighted power” show up initially (also similar question when they moved from TSS to stress points). It could have been that Zwift used a slightly different calculation to normalized power, meaning they would not be interchangeable. At the end of the day, weighted power basically is trying to give a sense of how hard the overall ride was. If you do a consistent 200W for 3 hours that average power will be 200W, but if what you do is over-unders for the whole 3 hours and the average power is again 200W the ride will “feel” a lot different - harder. The normalized/weighted average will give you a sense of how hard that over-under ride (or any other ride with fluctuating power) would feel.
I tried clicking and a pretty extensive ai answer was right at the top
Normalized aka Weighted = Average power pushing on the pedals
Average power = Pushing the pedals and not (Freewheeling)
About as simplistic explanation
The Normalised Power differs from the Weighted Power in that it has a strict mathematical formula for calculating the value (developed by Dr.Coggan). Weighted Power (or Weighted Average Power) is calculated using any proprietary formula the app or service designer has chosen to use. The NP and WP values are usually close, but not the same.
Thank you. Helpful. Likely the differences aren’t that significant and Zwift complicates it by offering both choices.
Thanks for that. It seems like it’s not a big deal or difference unless you’re racing and want precision
Generally speaking, from what I understand, Average power will almost always be less than NP or weighted power.
But I’ve had several rides where my Average power was higher.
Many of those rides were over an hour long.
What do you do with the information? I always wonder what the utility is.
Personally I don’t use average power or weighted power during a ride. I think either of those would probably incentivize me to reduce my warm-up and cool-down times 
After a ride with a lot of efforts of varying lengths something like normalized power can give you better sense of how hard the overall ride was. If you had a ride with an average power of 200W, and a normalized power of 300W, then that was likely a much harder ride than a ride with an average power of 200W and a normalized power of close to 200W (which would be more like a consistent 200W for the whole ride).
If I do two rides at the same average power, and my perceived exertion from one of them is much higher, sometimes normalized power provides the answer of why that is. It’s also an interesting fact to look at in race results when my average power is very close to other riders but NP is significantly different. It often tells a story about the decisions made during the event.