Dictionary

gigawatt-hour en · NOUN

Etymology

By surface analysis, gigawatt + hour, or, by surface analysis, giga- + watt-hour.

Meanings

1. A unit of energy equal to that provided by one gigawatt acting for one hour (3·6 × 10¹² joules).
   • Meronyms: yoctojoule (1.000e-24 J) < zeptojoule (1.000e-21 J) < attojoule (1.000e-18 J) < hartree (4.35974e-18 J) < femtojoule (1.000e-15 J) < picojoule (1.000e-12 J) < nanojoule (1.000e-9 J) < microjoule (1.000e-6 J) < millijoule (1.000e-3 J) < joule (1 J) < milliwatt-hour (3.6 J) < gram calorie (4.184 J) < microwatt-year (31.536 J) < kilojoule (1.000e3 J) < British thermal unit (1.05506e3 J) < watt-hour (3.600e3 J) < kilogram calorie (4.184e3 J) < milliwatt-year (31.536e3 J) < megajoule (1.000e6 J) < kilowatt-hour (3.600e6 J) < watt-year (31.536e6 J) < gigajoule (1.000e9 J) < megawatt-hour (3.600e9 J) < kilowatt-year (31.536e9 J) < terajoule (1.000e12 J)
   • 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. (metonymically) A measure of the amount of equipment that produces, consumes, transmits, or stores this amount of energy.
   • Inside the world’s largest battery plant, delicate robot arms coat sheets of aluminum and copper foil—each only 5 micrometers thick, about a 20th the diameter of a human hair—with an electrode slurry, a process that resembles nothing so much as spreading jam on bread. […] This facility, covering almost 2 square miles in Ningde, in southeastern China, is designed to produce 60 gigawatt-hours of EV batteries annually, enough to power 1 million Model Ys for Tesla Inc. It’s the flagship manufacturing hub for one of the world’s most important automotive companies, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., or CATL. More than 1 out of every 3 EVs made this year had a CATL battery inside, according to data from South Korea-based SNE Research—including cars from BMW, Ford, Honda, Mercedes and Tesla, as well as Chinese brands such as Xiaomi. In May the company raised $5.3 billion by selling shares in Hong Kong, and its 57-year-old founder, Yuqun “Robin” Zeng, is now one of the 30 wealthiest people on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated fortune of $58.3 billion. 2025 December 23, “China's EV Battery Giant Is Trying to Find a New Road”, in Bloomberg Businessweek:
   • China's battery sales surged 49 percent to 786 gigawatt-hours in the first nine months of this year from a year earlier, with exports jumping 33 percent to 129 GWh, according to official figures. 2025 November 13, Li Xiuzhong, “Solid-State Batteries May Not Hit Chinese Market Until After 2030, Insiders Say”, in Yicai Global:
   • 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. 2025 October 1, Faseeh Mangi, Tooba Khan, “Pakistan's Solar Boom Faces Ire From Debt-Strapped Government”, in BloombergNEF, archived from the original on 02 Oct 2025:

Forms

Relateds

gigawatt hour · mul:GWh · mul:GW·h · mul:GW h

Translations (5)

sv gigawattimme (unit of electrical energy) · fr gigawatt-heure (unit of electrical energy) · fi gigawattitunti (unit of electrical energy) · it gigawattora (unit of electrical energy) · fr gigawattheure (unit of electrical energy)

wikidata: Q2051195