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See what any appliance costs to run, pick a common one or enter your own wattage.
Electricity is billed per kilowatt-hour (kWh), the energy used by a 1,000-watt appliance running for one hour. To find a device's running cost, multiply its power in kilowatts by the hours it runs by your price per kWh. A 2,000-watt (2kW) heater run for 3 hours at 30 cents per kWh costs 2 × 3 × 0.30 = $1.80. The calculator above does this for any appliance once you know its wattage.
The big users are the ones that make heat. Anything that heats or cools, electric heaters, kettles, ovens, tumble dryers, air conditioners, dominates a bill because they draw a lot of power. Low-wattage electronics left on standby cost little each, but add up across a home. Focus savings on the high-wattage, long-running appliances first.
Find the wattage. It is usually on a label on the appliance or in the manual, given in watts (W) or kilowatts (kW); divide watts by 1,000 to get kW. For devices that cycle on and off, like fridges, the running cost is lower than the rated wattage suggests because they are not drawing full power constantly.
Sorted by what it costs to run over a year, not by how many watts it draws, and recalculated from whatever rate you typed above. The order is the point: a 2,200W kettle sits near the bottom and a 150W fridge sits near the top, because the fridge never stops and the kettle runs for minutes. Wattage tells you how hard something pulls, never how much it costs.
| Appliance | Power | Days/yr | kWh/year | Cost/year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air conditioner A 2.5kW split system cooling, over a four month summer. | 2000W | 120 | ||
| Electric heater Thermostat cycling allowed for, over a four month winter. | 1500W | 120 | ||
| Tumble dryer Per load, roughly an hour. The most expensive hour in the house. | 3000W | 200 | ||
| Fridge freezer Cycles at about a third duty, so 8 equivalent hours. Never off. | 150W | 365 | ||
| Gaming PC Under load. Idle is far lower, often under 80W. | 400W | 365 | ||
| Electric oven Cycles to hold temperature, so well under its rated draw. | 2100W | 300 | ||
| Dishwasher Per cycle. Nearly all of it is heating the water. | 1800W | 300 | ||
| Kettle High power, tiny runtime. About 15 minutes of boiling a day. | 2200W | 365 | ||
| Television A 55 inch LED. OLED and larger sets run higher. | 100W | 365 | ||
| Washing machine Per load, cold fill. A hot wash is several times this. | 500W | 250 | ||
| Microwave Minutes at a time, so it barely registers on a bill. | 1000W | 365 | ||
| LED bulb Ten of these cost less to run than one old halogen. | 10W | 365 |
Typical figures for modern appliances, not measurements of any particular model. Anything that thermostats is given as equivalent hours at full power, which is why the fridge shows 8 rather than 24, and why seasonal kit is costed over a season rather than a year.
| Left plugged in | Draw |
|---|---|
| Set-top or cable box The worst offender in most homes, and it never sleeps. | 10 to 20W |
| Games console in rest mode Downloads updates. Full shutdown saves nearly all of it. | 10 to 15W |
| Desktop PC asleep Small, but it is 24 hours a day. | 3 to 5W |
| TV on standby Modern sets are far better than their reputation. | 0.5 to 3W |
| Phone charger, nothing plugged in Effectively nothing. This one is a myth. | under 0.5W |
The phone charger is the myth. An idle charger costs a few cents a year and unplugging it is not a saving worth making. The set-top box beside it can cost more than a television, because 15 watts running every hour of the year is 130 kWh, and that is a real number on a real bill.
Everything above is typical, and typical is not yours. The label on an appliance gives peak draw, which overstates anything that cycles, so reading it off the plate and multiplying by 24 is how people end up convinced their fridge costs more than their car.
The way to settle it is to measure. A plug-in energy monitor sits between the socket and the appliance and totals real kWh over days or weeks, which is the only method that captures cycling, standby and the way you actually use the thing. They cost about twenty dollars, they pay for themselves the first time they find a set-top box, and one meter does the whole house a week at a time. As an eBay Partner Network affiliate, outbound links may earn a commission at no cost to you.