It’s because in Mandarin you count in myriads (万 = 10,000) and then 亿 = 10^8 = a hundred million, which is just 万×万. So million-kilowatt is really just a literal calque of 百万千瓦, which is the normal way to describe power capacity in Mandarin since it builds these numbers with 万 and 亿 multipliers (万千瓦, 亿千瓦) rather than reaching for SI prefixes like 吉瓦 (gigawatt), even though 吉瓦 technically exists.
million kilowatt… ugh… why don’t they just say terawatt?
It’s because in Mandarin you count in myriads (万 = 10,000) and then 亿 = 10^8 = a hundred million, which is just 万×万. So million-kilowatt is really just a literal calque of 百万千瓦, which is the normal way to describe power capacity in Mandarin since it builds these numbers with 万 and 亿 multipliers (万千瓦, 亿千瓦) rather than reaching for SI prefixes like 吉瓦 (gigawatt), even though 吉瓦 technically exists.
You reminded me of pet peeve of mine when I realized that a metric ton is 1000 kilograms, aka a megagram.
An annoyance of mine is how the imperial long ton is almost the same as a metric ton, and why does the imperial system have two tons?!
More words make big number sound bigger.
It’s gigawatt… kilo - mega - giga …but you’re right…
woops… off by an order of magnitude right? thanks for the correction