Gigawatts to Horsepower (GW to hp)
1 gigawatt equals 1,341,022.09 horsepower (rounded).
How to convert gigawatts to horsepower
To convert gigawatts to horsepower, multiply the number of gigawatts by 1,341,022.09. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply horsepower by 7.456998716×10⁻⁷ (rounded).
horsepower = gigawatts × 1,341,022.09
Example: 10 gigawatts = 13,410,220.9 horsepower.
Several different horsepower units exist. This site lists mechanical (745.7 W), metric (735.5 W) and electrical (746 W) horsepower separately.
About these units
Gigawatt (GW)
One billion watts. The scale of large power plants and national grids.
At a billion watts, power stops being a property of a single machine and becomes a property of a power system. A gigawatt is roughly the annually averaged power consumption of a city of 1.8 million inhabitants, and it is used for large power plants, national grids and, increasingly, large data centers. Planners talk in gigawatts because a country's demand, or the capacity of a new wind or solar program, is far too big to quote sensibly in kilowatts.
Some real installations show the scale. The largest unit of Belgium's Doel nuclear station has a peak output of 1.04 GW, some HVDC converters have been built with ratings up to 2 GW, and China's Three Gorges Dam is rated at roughly 22 GW. Germany's installed wind capacity was 25.8 GW in 2010. One common slip is writing gigawatts per hour, which is a rate of change used for grid ramping, when gigawatt-hours, a quantity of energy, is meant.
1 gigawatt = 1,000,000,000 watts (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigawatt; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (power)
Horsepower (hp)
The mechanical horsepower: 550 foot-pounds per second, about 745.7 watts. James Watt coined it to compare steam engines with draft horses.
Horsepower was a sales pitch before it was a unit. Late in the 18th century the Scottish engineer James Watt adopted the term to compare the output of steam engines with the draft horses they replaced. His 1782 experiments found that a brewery horse could produce 32,400 foot-pounds-force per minute, and in 1783 he and Matthew Boulton standardized the figure at 33,000 foot-pounds-force per minute. Customers could then be told how many horses an engine would replace.
That figure works out to 550 foot-pounds-force per second, or about 745.7 watts: the power needed to lift 550 pounds by one foot in one second. Several cousins exist, including metric horsepower and electrical horsepower, defined as exactly 746 W. Car ratings added more confusion. Early British taxable horsepower was a formula based on bore and cylinder count, not measured output, and American ratings before 1972 used SAE gross brake horsepower, measured without accessories. In the European Union, horsepower may be used only as a supplementary unit under Directive 80/181/EEC, in force from 1 January 2010.
1 horsepower = 745.6998716 watts (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Horsepower; Wikipedia: Metric horsepower
Related conversions
- Horsepower to gigawatts (reverse)
- Gigawatts to watts
- Gigawatts to kilowatts
- Gigawatts to megawatts
- Gigawatts to metric horsepower
- Gigawatts to BTU per hour
- Watts to horsepower
- Kilowatts to horsepower
- Megawatts to horsepower
- Metric horsepower to horsepower
- BTU per hour to horsepower
- Milliwatts to horsepower
- Electrical horsepower to horsepower
- Foot-pounds per second to horsepower
- Tons of refrigeration to horsepower
- Kilocalories per hour to horsepower
- Calories per second to horsepower
- Ergs per second to horsepower
See all power units.