How long do you have to leave a light on to use one kilowatt?

Question

Tryingt to get an idea of how long I have to leave a light on to use one kilowatt. Thanks for the help...

Answer 1

If you use a 100 watt light buld, it would take ten hours to use a Kilowatt...a 500 watt light buld would use the same energy in 2 hours. A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts so you simply take the 1000 watts and divide it by the wattage of the bulb to get the time it will take to use up the 1000 watts. That help any?

Answer 2

A kilowatt or watt measures how fast something uses energy, but not how much energy it uses in total.

A kilowatt-hour measures how much energy is used. It is equivalent to a device with a power of 1kilowatt running for 1 hour.

A standard incandescent uses 60watts. Using it for 1 hour uses 60watt-hours, or 0.06 kilowatt-hours. However, after 1 hour, it still uses energy at a rate of 60watts. The only way to increase the rate of usage to 1kilowatt would be a stronger lightbulb or more lightbulbs.

Assuming you meant a kilowatt-hour, you would divide 1 kilowatt-hour by 60watts (0.06kilowatts) to get 16.67 hours. So it would take 16.67 hours for an incandescent bulb to use 1 kilowatt-hour.

Answer 3

A kilowatt is a measure of power, not energy.  To use a kilowatt hour of energy, you can use a 100 watt light for 10 hours.  100 watts times 10 hours is 1000 watt hours, which is a kilowatt.

Answer 4

You're a bit confused. It would take a fairly large light to consume energy at the rate of one kiloWatt. Perhaps you mean kiloWatt-hour, which is an amount of energy. A standard 60-Watt bulb consumes one kiloWatt-hour of energy in a little under 17 hours. On average, a kiloWatt-hour costs about 10 cents in the USA.