Megawatt
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A megawatt (MW) equals one million watts of electricity and is used to measure electric output. In general, megawatts are used to calculate how much a power plant generates electricity or how much electricity is consumed by a particular area, such as a city, state, or country. The term megawatt hour refers to megawatts of electricity generated per hour.[1][2][3]
Background
Electricity can be measured in the following ways:[3]
- A watt is the rate at which electricity is consumed at a particular moment. A 20-watt light bulb will consume 20 watts of electricity at any moment when it is on, for example.
- A watt hour is how much electricity is consumed per hour. A 20-watt light bulb consumes 20 watt hours of electricity over one hour, for example.
- A kilowatt is equal to 1,000 watts, and one kilowatt hour (kWh) refers to one hour of electricity consumed at a rate of 1,000 watts. The measure kWh generally appears on residential electric bills outlining how much electricity was consumed over a given month.
- A megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts, which is equal to 1 million watts.
- A gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts, which is equal to 1 billion watts.
Electricity generation
The chart below shows utility-scale net electricity generation in thousand megawatt hours in the United States (by source) from 2001 to 2016. In 2016, the United States produced 141,181 thousand megawatt hours of electricity.[4]
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Northwest Power and Conservation Council, “Megawatt,” accessed January 30, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Glossary, M” accessed January 28, 2014
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Union of Concerned Scientists, “How is Electricity Measured,” accessed January 30, 2014
- ↑ U.S. Energy Information Administration, "Electricity Data Browser," accessed April 11, 2017
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