What is a megawatt hour (MWh)?

Many of us are currently following the news intensely, with so much going on in the world right now. But often times, words or terms which are unfamiliar to us are being used. In this blog we want to help you understand what exactly a megawatts is. Most of us have heard about kilowatts, but what about megawatts?

A megawatt is simply defined as 1 million watts. Because there are 1,000 watts in a kilowatt, you could also think of a megawatt as 1,000 kilowatts. When dealing with watts in these quantities, especially when it comes to non-scientific matters, it’s much easier to talk about electricity in terms of megawatts than millions of watts.

Just like there are 1,000 kilowatts in 1 megawatt, there are also 1,000 kilowatt-hours in 1 megawatt-hour.

Your electric bill is measured in kilowatt-hours because megawatt-hours are so much larger in size. Although your electricity usage will rarely be described in megawatt-hours, utilities, for instance, use MWh’s all the time.

The abbreviation for one megawatt hour is 1 MWh.

What Is A Megawatt-hour?

So, what is a megawatt-hour? A megawatt-hour is just like a kilowatt-hour in the sense that it’s a measure of energy. Compare it to a petrol tank. If your petrol tank holds 15 gallons of petrol, and your car can run on a gallon for 20 miles, then your petrol tank is good for 300 miles. Similarly, you can calculate the range of an electric car based on its battery size and consumption rate. If an EV has a “tank” of 60 kilowatt-hours and consumes 1 kWh for every 4 miles of driving, your total range would be 240 miles.

A megawatt-hour is the same as one megawatt of power used continually for one hour. Because megawatts are so large, it’s easier to grasp a megawatt-hour if we break it down.

1 megawatt (MW) = 1,000 kilowatts (kW), or the power used by the average microwave oven

1 megawatt-hour (MWh) = 1 MW for one hour or 1,000 kW for one hour.

The three time periods

We know this can be a worrying time for many people so we want to keep you informed about any changes or updates in the industry that can potentially have a direct effect on you as a consumer. Our focus here at Energy Nordic is providing a transparent service where customer satisfaction is most important.

With that in mind, it is recommended to be cautious with consumption over the next period of time and to try and utilise the (VALLE / P3) cheapest time periods as much as possible for high consumption appliances.

These are the hours set by the government on June 1, 2021 for electricity time periods for the 2.0TD tariff (any energy supply with less than 15kW contracted power):

• P3 – Off-Peak Hours (VALLE): these are the cheapest hours and range from 12:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. Monday – Friday, as well as 24 hours on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays.
• P2 – Mid-Peak Hours (LLANO): these are moderately priced hours and range from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and from 10.00 p.m. to 12.00 a.m Monday – Friday.
• P1 – Peak-Hours (PUNTA): these are the most expensive hours and the best time to be conscious about consumption. They run from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from to 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m Monday to Friday.

Click here to read more about the changes that came into place on June 1st 2021.

We developed a tool called – What the Tariff – this enables our customers, or anyone for that matter, to see in real time, which tariff we are currently on and which tariff is coming next, in order to work out best times to use those high consumption appliances:
What The Tariff.

Here is a link to some printable versions of the timetables if you wish to print and stick on your fridge (We find them very useful!):
Printable energy period timetables.

On OMIE’s website you are able to see the increase of the energy market price over the past year. OMIE is where electricity supply companies in Spain purchase electricity. If you wish to follow the OMIE market price of energy in Spain yourself – you can click here to check OMIE’s market price day by day, hour by hour.

In view of keeping bills down during the current global energy crisis, there are of course, modifications you, as a consumer, can make to ensure your bills are as low as possible. Implementing conscious consumption during those cheaper P3 hours, will make a big difference to the prices of our bills.

Lastly, here is a link so you can directly register with your distributor online and monitor your consumption daily throughout the month, which can help in view of keeping usage as optimised as possible. You can see the name of your distributor on the bottom of the last page of your Energy Nordic bill:

Click here to register with e-distribucion

Click here to register with i-DE

Once registered with your distributor, as above, you will be able to monitor your consumption live and access historical data, day by day, hour by hour. If you have solar installed, you will also see the breakdown of your own production, consumed and sold back to the grid.

We stand by ‘The power of simplicity‘ always, so if you have any questions, please leave a comment below or give us a call and speak to one of our friendly energy experts in your language.