Gigawatt-hour
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A unit of energy equal to that provided by one gigawatt acting for one hour (3·6 × 10¹² joules).
"Holonyms: megawatt-year (31.536e12 J) < petajoule (1.000e15 J) < terawatt-hour (3.600e15 J) < gigawatt-year (31.536e15 J) < exajoule (1.000e18 J) < petawatt-hour (3.600e18 J) < terawatt-year (31.536e18 J)"
- 2 A measure of the amount of equipment that produces, consumes, transmits, or stores this amount of energy. metonymically
"Both [solar photovoltaic] panel and battery imports from China [to Pakistan] are on the rise. […] The nation also purchased about 1.25 gigawatt-hours of batteries in 2024 [=1.25 gigawatt-hours' worth of battery capacity], according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. By 2030, that could increase to 8.75 gigawatt-hours by 2030, increasing financial pressure on the grid, the analysts said."
Example
More examples"Holonyms: megawatt-year (31.536e12 J) < petajoule (1.000e15 J) < terawatt-hour (3.600e15 J) < gigawatt-year (31.536e15 J) < exajoule (1.000e18 J) < petawatt-hour (3.600e18 J) < terawatt-year (31.536e18 J)"
Etymology
By surface analysis, gigawatt + hour, or, by surface analysis, giga- + watt-hour.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.