What is a kWh?

You’ve seen the “kWh” on your monthly utility bill – but you might have wondered what this term exactly means.

Electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kWh of energy is equal to 1000 watt hours and will power a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours (100 watts x 10 hours = 1,000 watt-hours = 1 kWh). One watt is equal to 1 J/s. One kilowatt-hour is 3.6 megajoules, which is the amount of energy converted if work is done at an average rate of one thousand watts for one hour.

Duke Energy has a great breakdown of your estimatred kWh usage by the appliances in your home or office including air conditioners and heating (HVAC), kitchen appliances, hair dryers, and your laundry washer & dryer — these top 4 culprits will burn more energy than almost anything else in your home.

Pacific Power has an energy use calculator which factors in the number of appliances in your household, multiplied by the number of people, and their average monthly kWh usage to provide you an estimate of your monthly utility bill.

For businesses, Urjanet can help. Urjanet is a unique company because we’re a “Data-as-a-Service” firm. Urjanet exists at the intersection of big data and energy. We’re not doing dashboards or reports, but just selling energy data to our customers, energy management firms, energy software services, etc. The data comes from almost 1,000 utilities across the U.S., and we’re starting to go international. It’s an exciting time to be in our marketing department to help tell the story about “Big Energy Data.”

So if you’re looking to reduce your monthly utility bill, start by looking at your kWh. This is the same best practice that large, multi-facility organizations employ with their energy efficiency and sustainability projects.

For more information on how Urjanet can help with your company or firm’s energy management initiatives, contact us today.

Related Resources:

• What Is Calendarization?
• How Urjanet Ensures Data Quality: An Interview with Urjanet’s Energy Data Quality Assurance Engineer
• Webinar: 5 Ways to Ensure Data Quality for Sustainability Reporting

---

---