how many kilowatts are used in one home in one hour?

Answer 1

First, get your units straight. Kilowatts measure the RATE at which you are using energy, so you can't say how many kilowatts in one hour – it would be like asking how many miles per hour does a car go in one hour!

What you really want to know is how many kilowatt-hours are used in one hour, which is just the average rate of energy use (or power consumption) during that hour.

This will vary a lot from home to home and also with the time of day. But suppose you've got a few lights on and the TV and dishwasher are going, you might average 2kW (kilowatts) over an hour, in which case you would have used 2kWh (kilowatt-hours). But it could be a fraction of this or a lot more – depends what you're doing.

Answer 2

I think you're looking for the demand of a residential home -- the peak load requirements.

This value will vary depending on your climate, whether you use electricity for space heating, hot water, drying clothes, etc. From an air conditioning perspective, the size of the home will affect this as well.

Assuming you have an average 2500 sq. ft. home with natural gas for heating and hot water, your home will have a peak demand of around 6 kW. This is for the hottest days in the middle of summer, in the early evening as you begin to turn on lights.

Add another 2.5 kW for electric hot water and another 4+ kW for an electric clothes dryer.

In the middle of the night when most lights and applicances are off, your "base load" is probably well under 1 kW.

Answer 3

depends on many factors of course, but usually it is more than should be used.