Kilowatt Hour - Watt Hour Multiples and Billing Units

Watt Hour Multiples and Billing Units

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, gigawatt hours, and terawatt hours are often used for metering larger amounts of electrical energy to industrial customers and in power generation. The terawatt hour and petawatt hour are large enough to conveniently express annual electricity generation for whole countries.

SI multiples for watt hour (W·h)
Submultiples Multiples
Value Symbol Name Value Symbol Name
10-3 mW·h milliwatt hour 103 kW·h kilowatt hour
10-6 µW·h microwatt hour 106 MW·h megawatt hour
109 GW·h gigawatt hour
1012 TW·h terawatt hour
1015 PW·h petawatt hour


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.

Read more about this topic:  Kilowatt Hour

Famous quotes containing the words watt, hour, multiples and/or units:

    Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I am grown by sympathy a little eager and sentimental, but leave me alone, and I should relish every hour and what it brought me, the pot-luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest gossip in the bar-room.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Just because multiples can turn to each other for companionship, and at times for comfort, don’t be fooled into thinking you’re not still vital to them. Don’t let or make multiples be parents as well as siblings to each other. . . . Parent interaction with infants and young children has everything to do with how those children develop on every level, including how they develop their identities.
    Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)

    Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)