gigawatt

noun

giga·​watt ˈji-gə-ˌwät How to pronounce gigawatt (audio) ˈgi- How to pronounce gigawatt (audio)
: a unit of power equal to one billion watts

Examples of gigawatt in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was looking for local partners to build a data center in India with at least 1-gigawatt capacity. Priyanka Salve, CNBC, 4 Sep. 2025 Provinces like Guangdong are targeting ambitious capacity growth — 17 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2025, more than any single country outside China has achieved to date. Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 2 Sep. 2025 Tarnowsky estimates that this process is highly efficient and that a one-gigawatt reactor would produce enough tritium per year to run 800,000 homes, or 10 times as much as a fusion reactor of the same thermal power could make. New Atlas, 2 Sep. 2025 The report noted that 104 gigawatts of firm electricity generation is expected to retire by 2030. Noël Fletcher, Forbes.com, 1 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for gigawatt

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1962, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of gigawatt was circa 1962

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Cite this Entry

“Gigawatt.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gigawatt. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.

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