Kilowatt hour

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The kilowatt hour (symbol kWh, kWh or kW h) is a unit of energy

equal to 3.6 megajoules. If the energy is being transmitted or used at a Kilowatt hour
constant rate (power) over a period of time, the total energy in kilowatt
hours is the power in kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours. The
kilowatt hour is commonly used as a billing unit for energy delivered to
consumers by electric utilities.

Contents
1 Definition
2 Examples
3 Symbol and abbreviations for kilowatt hour
4 Conversions
5 Watt hour multiples and billing units
6 Confusion of kilowatt hours (energy) and kilowatts (power)
7 Misuse of watts per hour
8 Other energy-related units
9 See also
10 References Residential electricity meter located in
11 External links Canada
Unit information
Unit system Non-SI metric
Definition
Unit of Energy
The kilowatt hour (symbolized kWh as per SI) is a composite unit of Symbol kWh
energy equivalent to one kilowatt (1 kW) of power sustained for one
Unit conversions
hour. One watt is equal to 1 J/s. One kilowatt hour is
3.6 megajoules,[1][2] which is the amount of energy converted if work is 1 kWh in ... ... is equal to ...
done at an average rate of one thousand watts for one hour. SI units 3.6 MJ

The base unit of energy within the International System of Units (SI) is English 2,655,224 ftlbf
the joule. The hour is a unit of time "outside the SI", making the Engineering units
kilowatt hour a non-SI unit of energy. The kilowatt hour is not listed
among the non-SI units accepted by the BIPM for use with the SI, although the hour, from which the kilowatt
hour is derived, is.[3]

Examples
An electric heater rated at 1000 watts (1 kilowatt), operating for one hour uses one kilowatt hour (equivalent to
3.6 megajoules) of energy. A television rated at 100 watts operating for 10 hours continuously uses one
kilowatt hour. A 40-watt electric appliance operating continuously for 25 hours uses one kilowatt hour. In terms
of human power, a healthy adult male manual laborer will perform work equal to about half a kilowatt hour
over an eight hour day.

Electrical energy is often sold in kilowatt hours. The cost of running an electric device is calculated by
multiplying the device's power in kilowatts, by the running time in hours, by the price per kilowatt hour. The
unit price of electricity may depend upon the rate of consumption and the time of day. Industrial users may also
have extra charges according to their peak usage and the power factor.
Whereas individual homes only pay for the kilowatt hours consumed, commercial buildings and institutions
also pay for peak power consumption, the greatest power recorded in a fairly short time, such as 15 minutes.
This compensates the power company for maintaining the infrastructure needed to provide peak power. These
charges are billed as demand charges.[4]

Major energy production or consumption is often expressed as terawatt hours (TWh) for a given period that is
often a calendar year or financial year. A 365-day year equals to 8,760 hours, therefore one gigawatt equals to
8.76 terawatt hours per year. Conversely, one terawatt hour is equal to a sustained power of approximately 114
megawatts for a period of one year.

Symbol and abbreviations for kilowatt hour

The symbol "kWh" is commonly used in commercial, educational, scientific and media publications,[5][6] and is
the usual practice in electrical power engineering.[7]

Other abbreviations and symbols may be encountered:

"kW h" is less commonly used. It is consistent with SI standards.[8] The international standard for SI[3]
states that in forming a compound unit symbol, "Multiplication must be indicated by a space or a half-
high (centered) dot (), since otherwise some prefixes could be misinterpreted as a unit symbol" (i.e.,
kW h or kWh). This is supported by a voluntary standard[9] issued jointly by an international (IEEE) and
national (ASTM) organization. However, at least one major usage guide[10] and the IEEE/ASTM
standard allow "kWh" (but do not mention other multiples of the watt hour). One guide published by
NIST specifically recommends avoiding "kWh" "to avoid possible confusion".[11]
"kWh" is, like "kW h", preferred by SI standards, but it is very rarely used in practice.
The US official fuel-economy window sticker for electric vehicles uses the abbreviation "kW-hrs".[12]
Variations in capitalization are sometimes seen: KWh, KWH, kwh, etc.; these are inconsistent with
International System of Units.
The notation "kW/h" is not a correct symbol for kilowatt hour, as it denotes kilowatt per hour instead.

Conversions
To convert a quantity measured in a unit in the left column to the units in the top row, multiply by the factor in
the cell where the row and column intersect.

joule watt hour kilowatt hour electronvolt calorie

1 J = 1 kgm2s2 = 1 2.77778 104 2.77778 107 6.241 1018 0.239

1 Wh = 3.6 103 1 0.001 2.247 1022 859.8

1 kWh = 3.6 106 1,000 1 2.247 1025 8.598 105

1 eV = 1.602 1019 4.45 1023 4.45 1026 1 3.827 1020

1 cal = 4.2 1.163 103 1.163 106 2.613 1019 1

Watt hour multiples and billing units

All the SI prefixes are commonly applied to the watt hour: a kilowatt hour is 1,000 Wh (symbols kWh, kWh
or kW h; a megawatt hour is 1 million Wh, (symbols MWh, MWh or MW h); a milliwatt hour is 1/1000 Wh
(symbols mWh, mWh or mW h) and so on. The kilowatt hour is commonly used by electrical distribution
providers for purposes of billing, since the monthly energy consumption of a typical residential customer
ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand kilowatt hours. Megawatt hours (MWh), gigawatt hours
(GWh), and terawatt hours (TWh) are often used for metering larger amounts of electrical energy to industrial
customers and in power generation. The terawatt hour and petawatt hour (PWh) units are large enough to
conveniently express the annual electricity generation for whole countries and the world energy consumption.

SI multiples for watt hour (Wh)

Submultiples Multiples

Value Symbol Name Value Symbol Name

103 mWh milliwatt hour 103 kWh kilowatt hour

106 Wh microwatt hour 106 MWh megawatt hour

109 GWh gigawatt hour

1012 TWh terawatt hour

1015 PWh petawatt hour

Confusion of kilowatt hours (energy) and kilowatts (power)

The terms power and energy are frequently confused. Power is the rate of delivery of energy. Power is work
performed per unit of time. Energy is the work performed (over a period of time).

Power is measured using the unit watts, or joules per second. Energy is measured using the unit watt hours, or
joules.

A common household battery contains energy. When the battery delivers its energy, it does so at a certain
power level, that is, the rate of delivery of the energy. The higher the power level, the quicker the battery's
stored energy is delivered. If the power is higher, the battery's stored energy will be depleted in a shorter time
period.

For a given period of time, a higher level of power causes more energy to be used. For a given power level, a
longer run period causes more energy to be used. For a given amount of energy, a higher level of power causes
that energy to be used in less time.

Misuse of watts per hour

Power units measure the rate of energy per unit time. Many compound units for rates explicitly mention units
of time, for example, miles per hour, kilometers per hour, dollars per hour. Kilowatt hours are a product of
power and time, not a rate of change of power with time. Watts per hour (W/h) is a unit of a change of power
per hour. It might be used to characterize the ramp-up behavior of power plants. For example, a power plant
that reaches a power output of 1 MW from 0 MW in 15 minutes has a ramp-up rate of 4 MW/h. Hydroelectric
power plants have a very high ramp-up rate, which makes them particularly useful in peak load and emergency
situations.

The proper use of terms such as watts per hour is uncommon, whereas misuse[13] may be widespread.

Other energy-related units

Several other units are commonly used to indicate power or energy capacity or use in specific application areas.
Average annual power production or consumption can be expressed in kilowatt hours per year; for example,
when comparing the energy efficiency of household appliances whose power consumption varies with time or
the season of the year, or the energy produced by a distributed power source. One kilowatt hour per year equals
about 114.08 milliwatts applied constantly during one year.

The energy content of a battery is usually expressed indirectly by its capacity in ampere-hours; to convert
ampere-hour (Ah) to watt hours (Wh), the ampere-hour value must be multiplied by the voltage of the power
source. This value is approximate, since the battery voltage is not constant during its discharge, and because
higher discharge rates reduce the total amount of energy that the battery can provide. In the case of devices that
output a different voltage than the battery, it is the battery voltage (typically 3.7 V for Li-ion) that must be used
to calculate rather than the device output (for example, usually 5.0 V for USB portable chargers). This results in
a 500 mA USB device running for about 3.7 hours on a 2500 mAh battery, not five hours.

The Board of Trade unit (BOTU) is an obsolete UK synonym for kilowatt hour. The term derives from the
name of the Board of Trade which regulated the electricity industry until 1942 when the Ministry of Power took
over.[14]

The British thermal unit or BTU (not to be confused with BOTU), is a unit of thermal energy with several
definitions, all about 1055 Joule or 0.293 watt hour. The quad, short for quadrillion BTU, or 1015 BTU, is
sometimes used in national-scale energy discussions in the United States. One quad is approximately 293 TWh
or 1.055 exajoule (EJ).

A TNT equivalent is a measure of energy released in the detonation of trinitrotoluene. A tonne of TNT
equivalent is approximately 4.184 gigajoules or 1,163 kilowatt hours.

A tonne of oil equivalent is the amount of energy released by burning one tonne of crude oil. It is
approximately 41.84 gigajoules or 11,630 kilowatt hours.

In India, the kilowatt hour is often simply called a Unit of energy. A million units, designated MU, is a gigawatt
hour and a BU (billion units) is a terawatt hour.[15][16]

Burnup of nuclear fuel is normally quoted in megawatt days per tonne (MWd/MTU), where tonne refers to a
metric ton of uranium metal or its equivalent, and megawatt refers to the entire thermal output, not the fraction
which is converted to electricity.

See also
Ampere-hour
Watt
Joule
Watt second
Orders of magnitude (energy)
Electric energy consumption
IEEE Std 260.1-2004

References
1. Thompson, Ambler and Taylor, Barry N. (2008). Guide for the Use of the International System of Units
(SI) (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160603203340/
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811). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology. 12.
 2. "Half-high dots or spaces are used to express a derived unit formed from two or more other units by
multiplication." Barry N. Taylor. (2001 ed.) The International System of Units. (http://physics.nist.gov/Pu
bs/SP330/sp330.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160603215953/http://physics.nist.gov/Pub
s/SP330/sp330.pdf) June 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. (Special publication 330). Gaithersburg, MD:
National Institute of Standards and Technology. 20.
3. The International System of Units (SI) (http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160429072143/http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_broc
hure_8_en.pdf) April 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.. (2006, 8th ed.) Paris: International Bureau of
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4. "Understanding Electric Demand" (https://www.nationalgridus.com/niagaramohawk/non_html/eff_elec-d
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garamohawk/non_html/eff_elec-demand.pdf) June 6, 2016, at the Wayback Machine., National Grid
5. IEC Electropedia, Entry 131-11-58 (http://www.electropedia.org/iev/iev.nsf/display?openform&ievref=1
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dpower.org/en/stat/unitsene.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20071126132157/http://www.wi
ndpower.org/en/stat/unitsene.htm) November 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. Danish Wind Energy
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nition/Kilowatt-Hour-kWh.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160302222956/http://www.bu
sinessdictionary.com/definition/Kilowatt-Hour-kWh.html) March 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
BusinessDictionary.com. Retrieved 9 January 2008; "US Nuclear Power Industry" (http://www.world-nu
clear.org/info/inf41.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20071126132157/http://www.world-nuc
lear.org/info/inf41.html) November 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. www.world-nuclear.org.
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a/energy.html) November 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. Renew On Line (UK). The Open
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7. ASTM SI10-10, IEEE/ASTM SI 10 American National Standard for Metric Practice, ASTM
International, West Conshohocken, PA, 2010, [www.astm.org] "The symbols for certain compound units
of electrical power engineering are usually written without separation, thus: watthour (Wh), kilowatthour
(kWh), voltampere (VA), and kilovoltampere (kVA)"
8. "Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)" (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf)
(PDF). physics.nist.gov. National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2008. Archived (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20160603203340/http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/sp811.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 3
June 2016. Retrieved 25 January 2017. "Reference [4: ISO 31-0] suggests that if a space is used to
indicate units formed by multiplication, the space may be omitted if it does not cause confusion. This
possibility is reflected in the common practice of using the symbol kWh rather than kW h or kW h for
the kilowatt hour. Nevertheless, this Guide takes the position that a half-high dot or a space should
always be used to avoid possible confusion;"
9. Standard for the Use of the International System of Units (SI): The Modern Metric System. (1997).
(IEEE/ASTM SI 10-1997). New York and West Conshohocken, PA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics
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10. Chicago Manual of Style. (14th ed., 1993) University of Chicago Press. 482.
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External links
Prices per kilowatt hour in the USA, Energy Information Administration

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