Universal Power Converter

Convert across many related units. Enter your value and which unit it uses.

Horsepower is not one unit. The mechanical horsepower in the hp_mech column is 745.7 watts, defined from 550 foot-pounds per second; metric horsepower is 735.499 watts, defined from 75 kilogram-metres per second. The PS column carries that same 735.499 figure because PS, short for Pferdestärke, is metric horsepower under its German name — which is why a car advertised at 300 PS in Stuttgart is about 296 hp in Detroit, a gap of roughly 1.4 percent that survives every honest conversion. Watts form the base and all ten columns move together from it. Two of the remaining entries are heat-flow units in disguise: BTU per hour at 0.293071 W is how furnace and boiler capacity is sold in North America, and the US refrigeration ton at 3516.85 W is exactly 12,000 BTU per hour, a rate originally tied to melting a short ton of ice over a day. What this does not touch is how a rating was obtained. Engine figures shift with the test standard used — SAE net against gross, DIN against ECE — before any unit maths happens. Nor does it distinguish real power in kilowatts from apparent power in kVA, since power factor is nowhere in the model, and with no time dimension it cannot reach energy.