What Is a Megawatt?

Megawatt (English: megawatt, usually abbreviated as MW) is a unit of power. It is often used to refer to the amount of electricity that a generator can emit in a unit of time under rated conditions. (The definition of note watts is: Joules / second, and the definition of megawatts is: Megajoules / second).

Megawatt is an order of magnitude derivative unit of the basic unit of power, and power itself is a description of work performed per unit time, similar to terms such as milliwatts and kilowatts. Take tile as an example:

One watt is defined as one joule of work per second, which is 3600 joules of work per hour.

Kilowatts are 1,000-fold derivative units of watts, meaning that they do work of 1,000 joules per second and 3,600,000 joules per hour.

Similarly, MW is defined as 1,000,000 joules per second and 3,600,000,000 per hour.

MW and

MW is abbreviated to MW and milliwatt is abbreviated to mW, so the two are easy to confuse and should be noted.

Watt was named after British scientist James Watt who made a significant contribution to the development of steam engines. This unit name was first adopted by the British Council for the Advancement of Science in 2889. In 1960, the 11th meeting of the International Congress of Metrology adopted watts as a unit of power in the International System of Units. People often use power units multiplied by time units to represent energy. For example, 1 kilowatt-hour is the energy consumed by an energy-consuming device with a power of 1 kilowatt in one hour, which is equal to 3.6 megajoules. Common formulas are W = UIT; W = P * T. ^[1]