📌 Overview
Convert power units: watt, kilowatt, megawatt, metric and mechanical horsepower, BTU per hour, and refrigeration tons.
🔌 Power Converter
Convert power units: watt, kilowatt, megawatt, metric and mechanical horsepower, BTU per hour, and refrigeration tons.
📖 Deep Dive: Power Converter
Power vs energy
Power is the rate of doing work or converting energy per unit time, measured in watts (W = J/s). Energy is the total amount; power is the speed - a 2000W water heater running for half an hour consumes 1 kWh of energy.
The two definitions of horsepower
They differ by about 1.4%; keep this in mind when reading foreign car reviews.
Air-conditioner power vs cooling capacity
The cooling capacity printed on an AC is the heat it moves; the input power is what it actually consumes. A 1.5-horsepower unit has about 3500 W of cooling capacity but usually only about 1100 W of input power - because an AC moves heat rather than generating cold, its COP is typically above 3.
A conversion example
An EV motor rated 150 kW converts to metric horsepower: 150000 divided by 735.5 is about 204 PS.