terawatt-hour

English

Etymology

By surface analysis, terawatt +‎ hour, or, by surface analysis, tera- +‎ watt-hour.

Noun

terawatt-hour (plural terawatt-hours)

  2. A unit of energy equal to that provided by one terawatt acting for one hour.
    Alternative forms: TW·h, TW h, TWh (symbols); terawatt hour
    Holonym: terawatt-year
    Meronyms: milliwatt-hour < watt-hour < kilowatt-hour < megawatt-hour < gigawatt-hour
    • 2025 July 28, Editorial staff, “How big tech plans to feed AI's voracious appetite for power. As data centres get more energy-hungry, the hyperscalers get more creative”, in The Economist‎[1], archived from the original on 28 July 2025:
      New facilities consume more electricity than ever. A rack of servers stuffed with AI chips requires about ten times more power than a non-AI version a few years ago. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that in 2023 America's data centres used 176 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. That is forecast to increase to between 325TWh and 580TWh by 2028 (see chart 2), or 7-12% of America's total consumption, with hyperscalers accounting for about half.

Translations

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