Megawatts to Watts (MW to W)

1 megawatt equals 1,000,000 watts exactly.

1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts

How to convert megawatts to watts

To convert megawatts to watts, multiply the number of megawatts by 1,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply watts by 0.000001.

watts = megawatts × 1,000,000

Example: 10 megawatts = 10,000,000 watts.

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)

Watt (W)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of power: one joule per second. A typical LED bulb uses 5–10 W and a laptop 30–60 W.

Credit for the name goes to C. William Siemens, who proposed it in August 1882 in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He chose it to honor James Watt, the Scottish inventor who in 1776 improved the Newcomen steam engine. An International Conference on Electric Units and Standards adopted Siemens' definition in London in October 1908 as the international watt. After the 1948 General Conference on Weights and Measures the unit was redefined in absolute terms, and in 1960 the 11th General Conference adopted it into the SI as the unit of power.

Today one watt is one joule per second, or equivalently one volt times one ampere. Orders-of-magnitude tables put an LED light bulb at about 7 W and an adult's basal metabolic rate at roughly 100 W. A 100 kg person climbing a 3 m ladder in 5 seconds works at about 600 W, while a laborer can sustain around 75 W over an eight-hour day. The watt measures a rate, so it says how fast energy is being used, not how much has been used in total.

The watt is the reference unit for power on this site.

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

Related conversions

See all power units.