Metrication in the United States There are no U.S. customary units for electric current, potential difference, or charge since these concepts were developed after the international adoption of metric in science. The metric units ampere, volt, ohm and coulomb are the only units used. The SI term hertz has replaced the term "cycles per second" as a unit of frequency. Energy is often measured in watt hours, BTUs, therms or calories rather than the SI joule. Residential and commercial electrical energy use is metered and billed in kilowatt hours, kW·h, as in most metric countries. Force measurements regularly use the pound instead of the SI
International System of Units and derived units may be used to express other derived units. For example, the SI unit of force is the newton (N), the SI unit of pressure is the pascal (Pa)—and the pascal can be defined as one newton per square metre (N/m). Prefixes are added to unit names to produce multiples and sub-multiples of the original unit. All of these are integer powers of ten, and above a hundred or below a hundredth all are integer powers of a thousand. For example, "kilo-" denotes a multiple of a thousand and "milli-" denotes a multiple of a thousandth, so there