By Samuel Markings • Updated Mar 24, 2022
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Power measures the rate at which energy is transferred or consumed. In everyday engineering, the SI unit is the watt, but many industries still rely on older units such as horsepower and the British thermal unit (BTU).
Although BTU and horsepower originate from different domains—BTU for heating and cooling equipment, horsepower for mechanical engines—both units quantify power. When you need to translate a boiler’s rating from BTU per hour to an equivalent horsepower figure, use the following relationship:
Power (Horsepower) = Power (BTU per hour) × 2,545
This factor is widely used in HVAC and automotive contexts to provide a quick equivalence between thermal and mechanical power.
