Gigavatio

Gigavatio, abbreviated as GW in English, is a unit of power equal to 10^9 watts. In languages such as Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, it is commonly written as gigavatio. The term is used to express large-scale electrical power generation and grid capacities.

One gigavatio equals one thousand megawatts (MW), one million kilowatts (kW), or 1,000,000,000 watts. As a prefix, giga- denotes a factor of 10^9, and the watt is the SI unit of electrical power, defined as one joule per second.

In practical use, gigavatio describes the capacity of power plants, interconnections, and national or regional electric grids. Global capacity is often reported in tens to hundreds of gigawatts; individual plants range from a few hundred megawatts to around 1–2 gigawatts for large nuclear or offshore wind facilities.

While gigawatt is the standard English form, gigavatio appears in non-English sources and in contexts where the native term is used. The concept remains the same, with the symbol GW widely used across languages.

See also: megawatt, terawatt, power (physics), electrical grid.