Megawatt-Hours to Gigajoules Converter

What Is a Megawatt-Hour?

A megawatt-hour is a measure of electrical energy equal to one megawatt, or 1,000,000 watts, of power over a one hour period. Megawatt-hours are a measure of electrical work performed over a period of time, and are often used as a way of measuring energy usage by electric companies.

Megawatt-hours are usually abbreviated as MWh, although the formally adopted expression is MW·h. The abbreviation MW h is also sometimes used. For example, 1 megawatt-hour can be written as 1 MWh, 1 MW·h, or 1 MW h.

In formal expressions, the centered dot (·) or space is used to separate units used to indicate multiplication in an expression and to avoid conflicting prefixes being misinterpreted as a unit symbol.^[1]

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What Is a Gigajoule?

One gigajoule is equal to 1,000,000,000 joules, which is the energy equal to the force on an object of one newton at a distance of one meter.

The gigajoule is a multiple of the joule, which is the SI derived unit for energy. In the metric system, "giga" is the prefix for billions, or 10⁹. Gigajoules can be abbreviated as GJ; for example, 1 gigajoule can be written as 1 GJ.

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