Megawatt (MW)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One million watts. Used for power plants and large industrial loads.

1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts (exactly).

About the megawatt

Million-watt figures appear wherever machines do work on an industrial scale, and the megawatt is the natural unit for them. Large electric motors, warships, data centers and some scientific equipment such as supercolliders operate at this level, and a large residential or commercial building may use several megawatts of electric power. It is not a unit with a famous inventor: it is the watt multiplied by the SI prefix mega, standing for one million.

Transport gives some vivid comparisons. Heavy diesel-electric locomotives typically produce and use 3 to 5 MW, modern high-powered electric locomotives peak at 5 or 6 MW, and the Eurostar e300 uses more than 12 MW. Power stations add a notation of their own: MWe refers to the electrical output of a generator, while MWt refers to thermal output. Argentina's Embalse plant, for example, generates 2,109 MWt of heat, which drives a turbine producing 648 MWe of electricity.

Sources: Wikipedia: Watt (megawatt section); Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (power)

Megawatt conversion chart

1 megawatt expressed in every other power unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• watt (power)
• kilowatt (power)
• gigawatt (power)
• milliwatt (power)
• metric horsepower (power)
• meter (length)
• kilometer (length)
• centimeter (length)
• millimeter (length)
• micrometer (length)
• nanometer (length)
• picometer (length)
• decimeter (length)
• hectometer (length)
• decameter (length)
• kilogram (weight & mass)

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