What is a kilowatt-hour?
Just to get completely nerdy: The standard unit of energy in MKS is the Joule. “Power” is constant energy generation or usage, and the standard unit is a watt, which is defined as one joule per second produced or consumed. Units in MKS are defined so as to avoid conversion constants, but that has the effect of making some of them huge and some of them tiny. It turns out that a joule is one of the small ones, and most kinds of things that people are interested in which involved production or consumption of energy deal in preposterously huge numbers of joules. (There are notable exceptions, though.) We buy energy, not power. Power represents the rate at which the bill accumulates, but it’s energy that’s critical. But it doesn’t really make sense to buy joules by the millions, simply because it would terrify most people who don’t understand the physics. So electric companies have adopted the kilowatt-hour as a reasonable-sized unit of energy.
It is a unit of work or energy equal to that done by one kilowatt of power acting for one hour. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts or 1.34 horsepower. Who operates and maintains the powerplant? The powerplant is operated and maintained by the Bureau of Reclamation. Who are the principal contractors for energy? The States of Arizona and Nevada; City of Los Angeles; Southern California Edison Co.; Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; California cities of Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena, Riverside, Azusa, Anaheim, Banning, Colton, and Vernon; and the city of Boulder City, Nevada. How is the firm energy generated at Hoover Dam allocated? Arizona – 18.9527 percent Nevada – 23.3706 percent Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – 28.5393 percent Burbank, CA – 0.5876 percent Glendale, CA – 1.5874 percent Pasadena, CA – 1.3629 percent Los Angeles, CA – 15.4229 percent Southern California Edison Co. – 5.5377 percent Azusa, CA – 0.1104 percent Anaheim, CA – 1.
A Kilowatt-hour (kWh) is electrical energy consumption per given time. In other words, it is the amount of power (measured in watts) an appliance uses in an hour of use. This is what your electric meter measures and is generally recorded on a monthly basis. On average, the typical homeowner in our service area uses about 700 kWh of electricity per month. The electrical usage for an apartment, on the other hand, would be about half of that.
