Meanings
plural terawatt-hours
- A unit of energy equal to that provided by one terawatt acting for one hour.
Holonym: terawatt-year
2 more examples
Meronyms: milliwatt-hour < watt-hour < kilowatt-hour < megawatt-hour < gigawatt-hour
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.
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, archived from the original on 28 Jul 2025
Origin
By surface analysis, terawatt + hour, or, by surface analysis, tera- + watt-hour.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish terawattitunti
- terawattituntiunit of electrical energy
German Terawattstunde
- Terawattstundeunit of electrical energy
Italian terawattora
- terawattoraunit of electrical energy
Swedish terawattimme
- terawattimmeunit of electrical energy
Cite this entry
terawatt-hour. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terawatt-hour
“terawatt-hour.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terawatt-hour. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “terawatt-hour,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terawatt-hour.
Source: terawatt-hour on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.