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Energy & Renewables vocabulary · Energy Basics and Units

Kilowatt-hour

Meaning in energy & renewables, with examples

nounCore term

In energy & renewables, kilowatt-hour means: A unit of energy equal to using or producing 1,000 watts of power for one hour. Household electricity bills and many energy statistics are given in kWh.

In Turkish: kilovatsaat, kWh

How it is used

The everyday unit for amounts of energy. Larger amounts are given in megawatt-hours (MWh), gigawatt-hours (GWh) and terawatt-hours (TWh). Consumer prices are quoted per kWh, wholesale prices per MWh. Read it aloud as 'kilowatt-hours' or letter by letter, 'K-W-H'.

Example sentences

  1. The average household here uses about 230 kilowatt-hours a month.

  2. We pay around 15 cents per kilowatt-hour on the commercial tariff.

Common collocations

  • per kilowatt-hour
  • price per kWh
  • kilowatt-hours a year
  • megawatt-hours
  • megawattA unit of power equal to one million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts. It is used to describe the size of power plants, wind turbines and large solar projects.
  • energy consumptionThe amount of energy used by a person, building, machine, company or country over a period, for example a day, a month or a year.
  • tariffThe set of prices and rules that decides how much a customer pays for electricity or gas, for example per kWh, per month or by time of day.
  • smart meterAn electricity or gas meter that records consumption at short intervals and sends the data automatically to the supplier or network operator.

More terms: Energy Basics and Units

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