Power and energy
Kilowatt (kW)
A unit of power equal to 1,000 watts. Power is the rate of energy flow at an instant in time. A 5 kW solar inverter, a 7 kW EV charger, or a 2.5 kW kettle all describe instantaneous draw or delivery, not total consumption. Power ratings cap how fast a device can move energy. In Amps, thepower parameter on a push uses kilowatts.
Kilowatt-hour (kWh)
A unit of energy equal to one kilowatt of power sustained for one hour. Domestic electricity bills, battery capacity ratings, and EV range all use kWh. A 13.5 kWh battery holds enough energy to power a 1 kW load for 13.5 hours, a 13.5 kW load for one hour, or any equivalent product. Energy is what gets bought, stored, and sold; power is the rate at which it moves.Megawatt (MW) and megawatt-hour (MWh)
Larger units used for grid-scale assets. One megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts; one megawatt-hour equals 1,000 kilowatt-hours. A utility-scale battery might be rated 100 MW / 200 MWh, meaning it can deliver 100 MW for two hours. Aggregators publish portfolio sizes in MW; capacity market obligations and balancing services are quoted in MW.Capacity
The maximum power output or energy storage a resource can sustain. For batteries, capacity refers to total energy in kWh or MWh. For generators and inverters, capacity refers to peak power in kW or MW. Nameplate capacity is the manufacturer rating; usable capacity is what the operator can dispatch after accounting for state-of-charge floors, depth-of-discharge limits, and degradation.Load
The instantaneous electricity demand of a building, circuit, or system. A house with a kettle on draws around 3 kW of load. Aggregate load across the grid varies by hour, day, and season, peaking on cold winter evenings in the UK. Load is the demand-side counterpart to generation. Smart-home systems shed, shift, or shape load to reduce bills or earn grid services revenue.Peak demand
The highest sustained load over a defined period. Network operators design infrastructure for peak demand, which drives a disproportionate share of grid costs. UK national peak demand sits in the 17:00 to 19:00 winter window. Reducing peak demand through batteries, demand response, or time-shifted load is one of the largest commercial drivers for distributed energy resources.Baseload
The minimum level of demand on the grid over a sustained period, typically supplied by generators that run continuously at near-constant output. Nuclear, large hydro, and combined-cycle gas turbines are traditional baseload sources. Renewable generation has reframed baseload as a planning concept rather than a fixed asset class; modern grids meet baseload through a portfolio that includes storage and demand flexibility.Power factor
The ratio of real power (kW) to apparent power (kVA) on an alternating-current circuit, expressed as a decimal between 0 and 1. A power factor of 1.0 is ideal: all current does useful work. Inductive loads like motors pull the power factor down. Grid operators penalise large consumers with poor power factor because reactive current loads the network without delivering energy.Battery storage
Battery energy storage system (BESS)
A complete battery installation including cells, battery management system, inverter, thermal management, and controls. Domestic BESS units sit in the 5 to 20 kWh range; commercial systems span hundreds of kWh; grid-scale BESS reach hundreds of MWh. BESS revenue stacks combine self-consumption, time-of-use arbitrage, capacity market payments, and frequency-response contracts. In Amps, every battery integration targets the canonical battery surface.Battery management system (BMS)
The embedded controller that supervises a battery pack. The BMS monitors cell voltages, currents, and temperatures; balances cells; enforces safety cutoffs; and reports state-of-charge and state-of-health to the inverter or cloud platform. Manufacturers expose a subset of BMS data through their cloud APIs. The BMS is the source of truth for capacity and degradation; cloud values are derived.State of charge (SoC)
The current energy in a battery, expressed as a percentage of usable capacity. A SoC of 100% means full; 0% means empty as defined by the BMS, which sets cutoff thresholds below the cell-level zero. SoC is the most commonly read battery telemetry value. In Amps, SoC surfaces as a canonical pull field, and thetarget parameter on charge and discharge actions sets SoC bounds.