GC: n
CT: Electricity used at any moment is measured in watts. It only makes sense that a 100-watt bulb uses 100 watts of electricity. A desktop computer uses about 65 watts and a central air conditioner uses about 3,500 watts. Since all of the watts add up quickly, the term kilowatt is used to represent 1000 watts. To understand how much energy you’re using you also have to consider how long you run your appliances. When you use 1000 watts for an hour, that’s a kilowatt-hour. The key is to reduce the number of kilowatt hours you use each month in order to save money and our natural resources…
S: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/how-much-is-a-kilowatt (last access: 19 December 2014)
N: 1. 1884, from word-forming element kilo- (“one thousand,” introduced in French 1795, when the metric system was officially adopted there; irregularly reduced from Greek khilioi “thousand,” from PIE *gheslo- “thousand”) and noun watt (unit of electrical power, 1882, in honor of James Watt (1736-1819), Scottish engineer and inventor; the surname is from an old pet form of Walter and also is in Watson).
- Kilowatt hour is from 1892.
2. A unit of power equal to 1,000 watts or to energy consumption at a rate of 1,000 joules per second. It is usually used for electrical power. An electric motor rated at one horse power uses electrical energy at a rate of about 3/4 kilowatt.
3. Electric utilities bill their commercial and industrial customers on the basis of two-component rates. These components are consumption (or energy), i.e. the amount of electricity used during the month, expressed in kilowatthours (kWh), and demand, i.e. the maximum power demand, or peak demand in kilowatts (kW), registered over a minimum period of fifteen minutes in the month.
S: 1. OED – https://bit.ly/2FMWOpy (last access: 22nd July 2014). 2 & 3. GDT – https://bit.ly/2KDDdHj (last access: 19 December 2014).
OV: kilo-watt
S: OED – https://bit.ly/2TSEPB1 (last access: 28 November 2018)
SYN: kW
S: GDT – https://bit.ly/2KDDdHj (last access: 19 December 2014); TERMIUM PLUS – https://bit.ly/2BCZXnO (last access: 19 December 2014).
CR: electrical energy, kilowatt-hour, watt.
