How many 100 Watt bulbs does it take to make a kilowatt if ran for an hour?

Question

Basically My electric company said they are charging 9 cents per kilowatt hour- just wondering how many 100 Watt light bulbs would have to on for an hour to make a kilowatt- Budget is tight, just want to understand everything a bit better- Thank you.

BTW I use 40 Watt bulbs, just saying 100 watts to make the math easier.

Answer 1

Your terminology is a bit wrong.

1 kw = 1000 watts, a unit of power.

so 10 - 100 watt bulbs make 1000 watts or 1 kw

This is independent of time.

Now if you ran those 20 bulbs for 1 hour you would use 1000 watt-hours or 1 kw-hour, which is a unit of energy. And that is what you buy from the power company. They charge you 9 ¢ for that.

hope this is clear.

Answer 2

1 kilowatt = 1,000 watts

1 kilowatt-hour = 1,000 watts for 1 hour (1,000 watt-hours)

So it would cost you 9 cents per hour to run 10 100 watt light bulbs.

As you can see, lights are not the big energy users.  Big energy users are things that heat like water heaters, clothes dryers and ovens, or things that cool like refrigerators, and air conditioners.

Answer 3

Use those funky twisty lights, they'll save you many Watts, not sure how much, but it will be a savings.  As for the 9 cents.  Yikes, where do you live?  I'm in Houston, Texas and we're paying around 20 cents / kWatt hour.

Answer 4

Light up ten 100 watts light bulbs in one hour shall spend 1kw per hour. That costs you 9 cents plus tax ( the electricity in your area is so cheap ??). Do not forget it charges you the renting fee for meter per month even you did not use any electricity. It called FIX FEES.