What is the SI for a unit of power?

1 Answer

Power is measured in watts. A watt is the power that it takes to do one joule of work in one second. It can be found using the formula #P = W / t#. (In this formula, W stands for "work.")

Large amounts of energy can be measured in kilowatts (#1 kW = 1 \times 10^3 W#), megawatts (#1 MW = 1 \times 10^6 W#), or gigawatts (#1 GW = 1 \times 10^9 W#).

The watt is named after James Watt, who invented an older unit of power: the horsepower.