Kilowatts to Ergs Per Second (kW to erg/s)

1 kilowatt equals 10,000,000,000 ergs per second exactly.

How to convert kilowatts to ergs per second

To convert kilowatts to ergs per second, multiply the number of kilowatts by 10,000,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply ergs per second by 1×10⁻¹⁰.

ergs per second = kilowatts × 10,000,000,000

Example: 10 kilowatts = 100,000,000,000 ergs per second.

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

Kilowatt (kW)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 watts. Used for the power of motors, cars and household appliances.

A kilowatt is simply the watt with the SI prefix kilo, meaning a thousand, attached. The watt was adopted into the SI in 1960 and is small next to machinery, since an incandescent night light uses about 4 W, so the thousand-watt multiple suits engines, electric motors, tools and heaters. For readers used to older units, one kilowatt is roughly 1.34 horsepower.

Small electric heaters with a single element can use about 1 kW, and a domestic electric kettle or microwave oven draws a similar amount. The average household in the United States uses about 1 kW of electric power over time. On a clear midday near the equator, a square meter of Earth's surface receives about 1 kW of sunlight. Do not confuse the kilowatt with the kilowatt-hour on an electricity bill: the first is a rate, the second is the energy used by running one kilowatt for an hour, which equals 3,600,000 watt-seconds.

1 kilowatt = 1,000 watts (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilowatt; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (power); BIPM: SI prefixes

Erg Per Second (erg/s)

CGS & old metricTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 10⁻⁷ watts, the CGS unit of power. Used for the luminosity of stars.

Erg per second is simply the erg divided by the second, a rate of energy use that forms the power unit of the centimeter-gram-second system. In base units it is 1 g cm2/s3, and it equals 10 to the power minus 7 watt, a tenth of a microwatt.

The system goes back to the committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1873, which recommended the centimeter, gram and second as fundamental units. Power in this system never received a special name, which is why the awkward compound form remained in use.

One watt is therefore 10 million erg/s. The small size means everyday machines look huge in these terms, and the unit is mostly met where very large outputs are discussed, such as luminosities in astrophysics, where Gaussian CGS units are still common.

1 erg per second = 1×10⁻⁷ watts (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Erg (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 conversion factors

Related conversions

See all power units.