Enter real power in kilowatts and power factor to get the equivalent apparent power in volt-amps.
How to Use the kW to VA Calculator
Change either field and the VA result updates immediately — no calculate button to press. That makes it easy to see how much a shifting power factor drags the apparent-power number up or down before you commit to a breaker or wire size.
This is the exact relationship the kW to kVA calculator uses, just resolved to VA instead of the kilo-prefixed unit. Apparent power is the raw combination of voltage and current a circuit has to carry; real power, in kW, is the slice of that actually doing work. Power factor is what separates the two.
VA = (kW × 1000) ÷ PF4 kW at a power factor of 0.8 works out to 5,000 VA — not 3,200. That's worth restating here even though it's the same trap as the kVA version: apparent power is never smaller than real power, so the formula divides by PF, never multiplies. Get the direction backward and every number that follows is wrong.
Push the power factor down to 0.5 and that same 4 kW load now needs 8,000 VA of apparent capacity — double, for identical useful output. At PF = 1.0 there's no gap at all: kW and VA (numerically, ignoring the ×1000) match exactly. Motors and anything with a coil sit on the low end of that range; a decent switch-mode supply can clear 0.95.