HACKER Q&A
📣 gnomodromo

Understanding KWh Intuitively


Hi, I'm trying to understand the unit kWh intuitively. I came up with the following comparisons. But they feel surprisingly unintuitive. Did I make an error somewhere?

1 Joule: Energy to lift 1 apple of 100g up 1m (roughly).

1 Watt: Lift 1 apple 1m within 1s.

1 kW: Lift 1000 apples 1m within 1s.

1 kWh: Every second for 1h, lift 1000 apples for 1m in 1s.

Or: Lift 1 apple 3600km within 1h? This feels off.

Now if I compare it to a microwave that uses 1kWh, it means with the energy I spend running a microwave for 1h, I could lift an apple up 3600km?

  👤 yorwba Accepted Answer ✓
Yes, it's also enough energy to accelerate your apple to 8.5 km/s or to heat 14 liters of water from 20 °C to 100 °C. Probably you don't have your microwave running at a constant power draw of 1 kW for an entire hour.