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.
Some data centers are now being built at gigawatt scale—roughly the power demand of a small city, says Anuja Ratnayake, emerging technology executive at the Electric Power Research Institute. — Alex Pasternack, Scientific American, 20 Oct. 2026 Meta’s Hyperion campus in Louisiana is designed to scale to five gigawatts. — Molly A. Wallace, Fortune, 20 Oct. 2026 Analysts estimate that every 100 million daily active users of Meta's agentic platform Muse requires between 1 to 4 gigawatts of GPU compute. — Jim Cramer, CNBC, 19 Oct. 2026 To help close that gap, the Netherlands aims to build 7 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050. — Aman Tripathi, Interesting Engineering, 17 Oct. 2026 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

Rhymes for gigawatt

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Browse Nearby Words

gigas
gigawatt
gig back
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Cite this Entry

“Gigawatt.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gigawatt. Accessed 20 Oct. 2026.

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