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Watts to BTU per Hour Conversion

Watts and BTUs per hour are two units for the same thing, power, so any wattage can be restated as a BTU/hr figure with one multiplication. Type a value, press Convert, and the equivalent in BTU per hour shows up straight away.

How the conversion works

A single watt is worth about 3.41214163312794 BTU per hour, which makes the whole conversion one multiplication: take the watt value and multiply it by that number. The multiplier never changes, whether you are converting 1 W or 10,000 W.

That rounded figure comes from dividing 3600 by 1055.05585262, because a watt delivers 3600 joules over one hour and one BTU (IT) is defined as exactly 1055.05585262 joules. The division does not terminate, so the number quoted above is only its rounded value, and the calculator works from the ratio itself rather than from that rounded value. Enter your figure in the field, press Convert to read the answer in BTU/hr, and use Copy for the result and its unit or Clear to reset both the field and the answer.

Watts to BTU/hr formula

The relationship is written as P(BTU/hr) ≈ 3.41214163312794 × P(W), meaning the power in BTUs per hour equals about 3.41214163312794 times the power in watts. Read the other way around, 1 BTU/hr is about 0.293071070172222 W.

Worked example: converting 5000 W means about 3.41214163312794 × 5000, which lands at about 17060.71 BTU/hr. To move in the opposite direction, multiply a BTU/hr value by about 0.293071070172222 to get back to watts.

Using the chart

The table below lists a few round wattages and their BTU/hr equivalents, which is a quick way to sanity-check a result the calculator gives you. Each entry is simply the watt value multiplied by about 3.41214163312794, so intermediate amounts fall right in line between the listed rows.