Kilowatt-hours to Megajoules (kWh to MJ)

1 kilowatt-hour equals 3.6 megajoules exactly.

1 kilowatt-hour = 3.6 megajoules

How to convert kilowatt-hours to megajoules

To convert kilowatt-hours to megajoules, multiply the number of kilowatt-hours by 3.6. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megajoules by 0.2777777778 (rounded).

megajoules = kilowatt-hours × 3.6

Example: 10 kilowatt-hours = 36 megajoules.

The 'calorie' on food labels is really a kilocalorie. The thermochemical calorie (4.184 J) is used here unless marked IT.

About these units

Kilowatt-hour (kWh)

Metric (SI)Current unit

3.6 million joules, the energy used by a 1,000-watt appliance in an hour. The billing unit for household electricity.

Before it was a line on every power bill, the kilowatt-hour had a British nickname: the Board of Trade unit, abbreviated B.T.U. after the government body that regulated the electricity industry until 1942, when the Ministry of Power took over. In India it is still often called simply a unit, and a million of them, written MU, is a gigawatt-hour.

A kilowatt-hour is the energy of a 1 kW device running for an hour, which is 3.6 MJ, or about 3,412 British thermal units. A 100 W television watched for 10 hours uses one, and boiling a liter of water in an electric kettle takes about 0.1. In 2020 the average US household used 893 kWh a month, an average continuous draw of about 1.22 kW.

Utilities multiply the kilowatt-hours consumed by a price per kWh, and larger customers may also pay for peak demand. One common error is writing kW/h, which would mean kilowatts per hour, a rate of change of power, not energy.

1 kilowatt-hour = 3,600,000 joules (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilowatt-hour; Wikipedia: British thermal unit; Wikipedia: Watt-hour

Megajoule (MJ)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One million joules. Used for fuel energy content and natural gas billing in many countries.

Picture a one-tonne car moving at 44.7 m/s, about 100 miles per hour: its kinetic energy is roughly one megajoule. Because the joule was originally conceived in 1882 as 10 million ergs, a megajoule is 10 to the 13th ergs, a figure that shows how little the old CGS unit suited everyday work and why the joule won out.

Food provides a more familiar benchmark. A Snickers bar of 280 food calories holds about 1.2 MJ, and a day's 2,000 food calories for a moderately active woman come to about 8.4 MJ. A kilowatt-hour of electricity is exactly 3.6 MJ, and exploding a kilogram of TNT releases about 4.2 MJ.

In other words the megajoule sits at the scale of a single serving of fuel, food or electricity, which is why it turns up in energy-content tables where joules would give unwieldy numbers.

1 megajoule = 1,000,000 joules (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Joule; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (energy); Wikipedia: Kilowatt-hour

Related conversions

See all energy units.