#Watt to kilowatt converter how to

Again, megawatts represent a very large amount of power, so you probably won’t have to deal with them too often. Take the number of megawatts and multiply it by the hours the system is running. Let’s use a 3.5 kW air conditioner that runs for 5 hours as an example: To find out how many kilowatt-hours an appliance is using, you just need to multiply the wattage of the appliance (which tells you how much power it needs to run) by the number of hours it’s running.

#Watt to kilowatt converter how to

How to figure out how many kWh an appliance uses You’re probably familiar with kilowatt-hours - it’s the unit used to measure your energy usage on your electricity bill. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) measures energy, or the amount of power over time. Yes, kilowatts and kilowatt-hours are two different things. Gigawatts are equal to one billion watts! Are kilowatts and kilowatt-hours different? Megawatts are much larger than kilowatts, and typically describe power at a large scale, like how much power an entire utility company is delivering.Īfter megawatts, you get to gigawatts, which you would use to describe the amount of power generated on a country-wide scale. One megawatt is equal to one million watts.

So, if your home required 7,000 watts of power, you could also write it as 7 kW. Watts are a pretty small unit of measure, and most households use thousands of watts - so instead of listing out all those zeros, you convert to kilowatts or megawatts.Ī kilowatt is equal to 1,000 watts. Number of kilowatts ÷ 1,000 = Number of megawatts What even are megawatts and kilowatts?Ī watt is the basic unit of power, and represents the rate at which energy flows through an electrical system. If you want to go from kilowatts to megawatts, do the opposite! Simply divide the number of kilowatts by 1,000 to find how many megawatts you have: Here’s an example of how to find how many kilowatts are in 30 megawatts: Number of megawatts x 1,000 = Number of kilowatts