Quads to Kilowatt-hours (quad to kWh)

1 quad equals 293,071,070,172 kilowatt-hours (rounded).

1 quad = 293,071,070,172 kilowatt-hours

How to convert quads to kilowatt-hours

To convert quads to kilowatt-hours, multiply the number of quads by 293,071,070,172. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply kilowatt-hours by 3.412141633×10⁻¹² (rounded).

kilowatt-hours = quads × 293,071,070,172

Example: 10 quads = 2,930,710,701,722 kilowatt-hours.

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

About these units

Quad (quad)

US customaryTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One quadrillion BTU (about 1.055×10¹⁸ J). Used to quote national and global energy use; US consumption was about 100 quads in 2005.

Energy planners reach for the quad when joules or gallons become unwieldy. One quad is a quadrillion (10 to the 15th power) British thermal units, a figure the US Department of Energy uses for national and world energy budgets. In SI terms it is about 1.055 exajoules, or 1.055 times 10 to the 18th joules.

Which BTU applies changes the last digits. The figure used here, 1.05505585 times 10 to the 18th joules, corresponds to the International Table BTU of roughly 1,055.06 J. The 59 degree Fahrenheit BTU used in American gas pricing would give a value about 0.02 percent smaller, and the Wikipedia article on the quad does not say which BTU it assumes.

For scale, one quad equals about 8 billion US gallons of gasoline or roughly 293 terawatt-hours of electricity. Wikipedia reports world primary energy production of about 638 quads in 2022. In 2005 the US economy used close to 100 quads, so the unit suits country-sized totals rather than anything a household buys.

1 quad = 1.055055853×10¹⁸ joules (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Quad (unit); EIA: British thermal units (Btu); Wikipedia: British thermal unit

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

Related conversions

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