Kilowatts to Megawatts Converter
Convert Kilowatts (kW) to Megawatts (MW) instantly, or use the conversion table below to look up common values.
Kilowatts to Megawatts conversion table
| Kilowatts (kW) | Megawatts (MW) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.001 |
| 2 | 0.002 |
| 3 | 0.003 |
| 4 | 0.004 |
| 5 | 0.005 |
| 10 | 0.01 |
| 25 | 0.025 |
| 50 | 0.05 |
| 100 | 0.1 |
How to convert Kilowatts to Megawatts
1 kW equals 0.001 MW. Use the converter above for any value, or read the table for common conversions.
MW = kW × 0.001 · kW = MW × 1000Multiply a kilowatts figure by 0.001 to get megawatts, or divide it by 1,000 to go the other way.
Worked examples
- 1 kW= 0.001 MW
- 5 kW= 0.005 MW
- 10 kW= 0.01 MW
- 100 kW= 0.1 MW
- 500 kW= 0.5 MW
What these units are
Kilowatts (kW). A kilowatt is 1,000 watts. It is the usual unit for appliance ratings, generators, inverters and household electricity demand.
Megawatts (MW). A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts. It is used for power stations, industrial loads and grid capacity, where large generator sets run into the megawatts.
Metric power conversions are exact. Check whether a horsepower figure is mechanical or metric before comparing two engines.
Converting Kilowatts to Megawatts in practice
Working in kilowatts
Exactly 1,000 watts make one kilowatt, written kW. This is the multiple that electrical equipment ratings use, and it equals one thousand joules of energy transferred per second.
Domestic appliance labels, generator sets, inverters, solar arrays and electric motors are all rated in kilowatts. Household demand and the capacity of a standby generator are usually quoted this way.
Since a kilowatt is a rate and a kilowatt-hour is an amount, multiplying kilowatts by hours of operation yields energy. Steps from watts to kilowatts to megawatts are exact powers of one thousand.
The common mistake is to add kilowatt ratings together and call the total energy use, when the total is only the power drawn at one moment. Consumption requires duration as well.
The kilowatt sits between the watt and the megawatt: appliance labels use watts, generators and inverters use kilowatts, and power stations use megawatts. An engine quoted in kilowatts cannot be compared directly with one quoted in horsepower without converting first.
Reading the result in megawatts
A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts, or one million watts, and it carries the symbol MW. Power at this scale is quoted in megawatts because a figure in kilowatts would run to several digits.
Grid-scale generating stations, industrial plants, large data centres and utility-scale solar farms are described in megawatts of capacity. Transmission and distribution planning also uses the unit for load forecasts.
A megawatt measures capacity, which is a rate, while a megawatt-hour measures delivered energy. One megawatt sustained for one hour therefore equals one megawatt-hour, or 3.6 gigajoules.
Reporting a plant's output as megawatts when the figure is megawatt-hours confuses capacity with production. The two differ by the operating time, so a megawatt figure alone says nothing about how much energy was generated.
Megawatts describe capacity at grid and industrial scale, while kilowatts describe the appliances and generators on the same site. The unit is also mistaken for the megawatt-hour, which is a sibling in the energy dimension; capacity and delivered energy are not the same figure.
Checking a kilowatts to megawatts conversion
Within the metric units a power conversion is a power of a thousand: watts to kilowatts, kilowatts to megawatts, and back. Those pairs are decimal shifts and a reader can do them without a converter.
Anything involving horsepower is a multiplication by a definition rather than a shift, and there are two definitions. Mechanical horsepower is exactly 745.7 watts and metric horsepower exactly 735.49875 watts, so the same engine carries a larger figure in mechanical horsepower than in metric.
When checking a power conversion, convert to watts first, because every unit in this dimension is defined against the watt and the intermediate value makes the comparison obvious. The trap is comparing a horsepower figure with a kilowatt figure without establishing which horsepower was quoted.
Tanzania reference points
Real quantities, converted into the units on this page.
Tanzania's installed electricity generation capacity
2,881.332 MW = 2,881,332 kW
EWURA reports 2,842.96 MW on the main grid and 38.372 MW off-grid, with TANESCO holding 92.31% of it. Installed capacity is what the country could generate at once, not what it generates on an average day.
Source: EWURA Fact Sheet — electricity sub-sector (installed capacity) · verified 2026-09-14
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