kW vs kWh

kW is power, kWh is energy. Mixing them up is an easy mistake when reading electric car spec sheets and charging prices.

The easiest way to keep these apart is water, an analogy the US Environmental Protection Agency also uses. A kWh is an amount of water; a kW is how fast it flows through the tap. The battery is the bucket, measured in kilowatt-hours. Charging and driving are flows, measured in kilowatts.

Filling the bucket: charge at a steady 11 kW for one hour and, before charging losses, you add 11 kWh. That is the whole relationship: power multiplied by time equals energy, and the US Energy Information Administration defines one kWh as one kilowatt for one hour. It also explains charging times: a large battery on a slow AC connection takes many hours, while a high-power DC session moves the same energy in far less time.

Emptying the bucket: driving consumes energy, so efficiency is quoted in energy per distance, such as kWh/100 km. Home electricity is metered in kWh, and many charging prices are quoted per kWh. If a number describes speed or strength it is kW; if it describes quantity, it is kWh.

  1. US EIA, Measuring electricity
    US Energy Information Administration Accessed
  2. US EPA, Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging: The Details
    US Environmental Protection Agency Accessed

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