- What is a Kilowatt Hour (kWh)? -
Find out how much electricity you are using at home
A Kilowatt Hour (kWh) it is a unit of measurement used to measure electricity consumption.
Therefore, if you are really interested in knowing how much electricity you are using at home and how much the electricity cost is, you need to learn what a Kilowatt Hour is.
For example, as you can see on the picture below, this household is using an average of 2700 kWh per year and it is paying 0,2173 euro per kWh they consume.
If we multiply the 2700 kWh by 0,2173 per kWh, this gives us an electricity variable cost of approximately 600 euro per year.
One Kilowatt (kW) it is the equivalent to 1000 Watts (W) so, for example, if we have a 60 Watts bulb and we want to find the equivalent in Kilowatts we just need to divide 60 by 1000 and that gives us a power consumption of 0,06 Kilowatts.
60 W /1000 = 0,06 kW
If we want to know how many Kilowatts hour are used by that bulb over a period of 10 hours, we just need to multiply 0,06 kilowatts by the 10 hours and that gives us a total of 0,6 Kilowatt Hours (kWh).
0,06 kWh x 10 hours = 0,6 kWh
Watt (W), Kilowatt (kW), and Kilowatt Hour (kWh) relationship
For those who are interested on some additional knowledge about this topic, have a look to the video below from the Youtube Effiworkx channel.
In this video we are explaining how Watts (W), Kilowatts (kW) and Kilowatt Hours (kWh) are related and how this knowledge translates into useful applications like deciding if purchasing a more energy efficient appliance it is really cost effective.
How to save electricity at home
If you are looking for tips and advice on how to save some electricity, have a look to this video that we have prepared about this very same topic.
All our videos can be found in YouTube, in both English and Spanish languages.
Additionally, if you are looking for energy saving opportunities but you don’t know where to start, use our electricity usage calculators to become aware of your electricity consumption, the electricity costs and the potential savings.
Electricity conservation - Save and conserve energy
Energy conservation can be defined as the decision and the act of using less energy
Energy conservation both benefit you and the environment
The act of saving and conserving electricity does benefit you because you will be paying less on your energy bills.
And it also does benefit the environment because conserving electricity prevents any unnecessary waste of natural resources.
Now, at individual level it may not look worth to try to save a few watts here or there.
Still, every little counts and if hundreds or thousands of us do save a little every time, it will make an important contribution towards conserving our natural resources.
For example, if 9000 households would manage to save as little as 10 Watts per hour (0,01 kWh) worth of electricity per day, that would add to 32850 Kilowatt hour (kWh) per year.
That is a considerable amount of electricity, but let’s add additional perspectives for clarity:
- Assuming an average cost of 0,18 euro (or dollars, or pounds, or any other currency) we would collectively be saving nearly 6000 euro per year.
- To produce 32850 kWh of electricity it is necessary to use around 17 metric tons of coal or 56 barrels of residual fuel oil.
In any case it is clear that small energy savings do really count when looking into the bigger picture.
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