Power and energy
Think of a car. Speed is like power, and distance is like energy. A load that draws 1 MW for one hour uses 1 MWh.
Example: a 100 MW data center running at full load for 24 hours uses 2,400 MWh in that day.
Where each unit shows up
- MW: the size of a grid connection, a power plant, or a data center campus.
- MWh: energy bills, power contracts and market prices, which are quoted in dollars per MWh.
- Both: batteries. A 100 MW, 200 MWh battery can deliver 100 MW for two hours.
Questions people ask
How many megawatts is a gigawatt?
One gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 megawatts. One megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts.
When a site is described as 300 MW, what does that mean?
It usually means the peak power the site is asking the grid to deliver. Ask whether the figure is the total grid demand or only the power for the computers inside.
Related
More glossary
- What is time to power?
- What is powered land?
- What is a powered shell?
- What is large load interconnection?
- What is a point of interconnection?
- What is an interconnection queue?
- What is queue position?
- What is ERCOT?
Need a site, or have one?
Tell us what you need and Voltane finds, reports on and prices candidate sites in ERCOT. Or bring a site you already have for a path-to-power report (by request for now).