Quad (unit)

A quad is a unit of energy equal to 10¹⁵ (a short-scale quadrillion) BTU,^[1] or 1.055×10¹⁸ joule (1.055 exajoules or EJ) in SI units.

quad
A Sankey diagram using quads.
General information
Unit of	energy
Symbol	quad
Conversions
1 quad in ...	... is equal to ...
US customary units	1015 BTU
SI	1.055×1018 joule

The unit is used by the U.S. Department of Energy in discussing world and national energy budgets. The global primary energy production in 2022 was 637.8 quad, i.e., 672.9 EJ. ^[2]

Conversion

Some common types of an energy carrier approximately equal to 1 quad are:

• 8,007,000,000 gallons (US) of gasoline
• 293,071,000,000 kWh
• 293.07 terawatt-hours (TWh)
• 33.434 gigawatt-years (GWy)
• 36,000,000 tonnes of coal
• 970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas
• 5,996,000,000 UK gallons of diesel oil
• 25,200,000 tonnes of oil
• 252,000,000 tonnes of TNT or five times the energy of the Tsar Bomba nuclear test
• 12.69 tonnes of uranium-235 (with 83.14 TJ/kg)
• 6 seconds of sunlight reaching Earth

See also

• Units of energy
• Orders of magnitude (energy)

References

1. "Energy: Glossary". Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
2. Energy Information Administration (2023-10-31). "World total primary energy consumption by region, Reference case" (PDF). International Energy Outlook 2023.