Megawatt (MW)

A megawatt (MW) is a unit of power equal to one million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts. It expresses the rate at which electricity is consumed or produced at a given instant, and it is the standard unit for describing the capacity of power plants, substations, and large compute facilities. When a Hashcenter is described as a '20 MW site,' that figure is its instantaneous electrical capacity—the load it can draw when fully populated and running.

Power versus energy

A common confusion is the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour (MWh). The megawatt is a rate, like the speed on a speedometer; the megawatt-hour is a quantity, like the distance traveled. A 1 MW load running flat out for one hour consumes 1 MWh of energy. This distinction matters for every miner because power capacity determines how many machines you can energize, while energy consumption over time determines your electricity bill.

Sizing a mining load

ASIC miners draw on the order of a few kilowatts each, so even a modest container site quickly scales into the megawatt range. A 1 MW deployment supports roughly 250 to 300 modern machines at about 3.5 kW apiece, before cooling and conversion overhead. Megawatt-scale loads require dedicated grid interconnection, a substation, and three-phase power distribution—infrastructure far beyond a residential service.

Renewable certificates and grid billing are likewise denominated in megawatt-hours, so fluency with the unit underpins both the engineering and the economics of any serious facility.