Power unit converter

The calculator converts power between watts, kilowatts and megawatts. Choose the unit of the power you enter and the unit of the result next to the boxes. A 2 kW electric kettle draws 2,000 W, and a wind turbine produces around 3 MW, that is 3,000 kW.

How it works

A watt is the amount of energy used or produced each second: 1 W is 1 joule per second. The prefixes kilo and mega mean thousand and million.

A few typical conversions:

• 1 kW = 1,000 W,
• a 60 W light bulb = 0.06 kW,
• a 1,500 W hair dryer = 1.5 kW,
• 0.5 MW = 500 kW.

Things to watch out for

Kilowatts and kilowatt-hours are the most commonly confused. A kilowatt (kW) is power, how much an appliance draws at any moment. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is energy, how much it uses over a period of time. A 2 kW kettle that runs for half an hour uses 1 kWh. Power into energy is converted by the appliance energy use calculator, and energy between units by the energy unit converter.

Car engines are still sometimes quoted in metric horsepower (PS): 1 PS is about 735.5 W, so a 100 PS engine is roughly 73.5 kW. The calculator does not offer horsepower.