Megawatts to Metric Horsepower (MW to PS)

1 megawatt equals 1,359.621617 metric horsepower (rounded).

1 megawatt = 1,359.621617 metric horsepower

How to convert megawatts to metric horsepower

To convert megawatts to metric horsepower, multiply the number of megawatts by 1,359.621617. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply metric horsepower by 0.00073549875.

metric horsepower = megawatts × 1,359.621617

Example: 10 megawatts = 13,596.21617 metric 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

Megawatt (MW)

Metric (SI)Current unit

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

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.

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

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

Metric Horsepower (PS)

Metric (SI)Current unit

Exactly 735.49875 watts, the power to lift 75 kilograms by one meter in one second. Called PS, CV or pk and used for car engines in Europe and Asia.

Continental Europe built its own horsepower on kilograms and meters instead of pounds and feet. The metric horsepower, written PS from the German Pferdestarke, is the power needed to lift 75 kilograms by one meter in one second, or 75 kilogram-force meters per second. The German standard DIN 66036 gives its value as 735.49875 W, about 98.6 percent of the imperial horsepower. It goes by many local names, among them cv in Italian and Portuguese, pk in Dutch, ch in French and hk in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

It had a French predecessor in the poncelet, a 19th-century unit based on 100 kgf-m/s. In 1972 the European Economic Community replaced PS with the kilowatt as its official unit for power, yet car brochures in many countries still quote PS or its cousins alongside kilowatts. When comparing a European car with an American one, remember that the two horsepowers differ by about 1.4 percent.

1 metric horsepower = 735.49875 watts (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Metric horsepower; Wikipedia: Horsepower

Related conversions

See all power units.