Electricity / Appliance Running Cost Calculator
Calculate the running cost of any appliance. Add multiple devices and find out your daily, monthly, and annual electricity cost.
US avg: $0.13/kWh
Total Electricity Cost
$124.49/mo
Monthly Electricity Cost
$4.15
Daily Total
$1514.60
Annual Cost
31.92 kWh
kWh Per Day
11651 kWh
Annual kWh
These appliances cost $124.49/month or $1514.60/year in electricity.
What is Appliance Running Costs?
An appliance's running cost is watts times hours times your electricity rate. The arithmetic takes ten seconds; the value is in what it reveals, which is usually that people worry about the wrong things.
Phone chargers and standby lights attract enormous attention and cost pennies a year. Anything that heats, cools or moves water — electric heaters, tumble dryers, kettles, air conditioning, immersion heaters — dominates a bill by an order of magnitude. Running the numbers reorders that intuition quickly.
The other thing worth knowing is that your marginal rate matters more than the average one printed on your bill. Tiered and time-of-use tariffs mean the cost of one extra unit can be substantially higher than the average implies.
The formula — how to calculate Appliance Running Costs
- Watts
- = the appliance's power draw — check the rating plate, not the box
- ÷ 1,000
- = converts watt-hours to kilowatt-hours, the unit you are billed in
- Rate
- = your marginal cost per kWh including delivery charges, not just the energy component
Rating plates show maximum draw, not typical draw. A 1,500 W air conditioner cycles rather than running flat out, so a plug-in energy monitor gives a far more honest figure than the label.
Step-by-step example
- 01A 1,500 W space heater running 6 hours a day at $0.16 per kWh.
- 02kWh per day: (1,500 × 6) ÷ 1,000 = 9 kWh.
- 03Daily cost: 9 × 0.16 = $1.44.
- 04Monthly: $1.44 × 30 = $43.20. Over a five-month heating season: roughly $216.
- 05Now a phone charger at 5 W, charging 3 hours a day: (5 × 3) ÷ 1,000 = 0.015 kWh, or $0.0024 a day — about 88 cents a year.
- 06The heater costs roughly 245 times more than the charger. Unplugging chargers is not where savings live.
- 07An LED bulb at 9 W for 5 hours a day costs about $2.63 a year; the 60 W incandescent it replaced would cost $17.52.
Where the money actually goes
Typical annual running costs at $0.16/kWh
| Appliance | Power | Typical use | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Space heater | 1,500 W | 6 h/day, 5 months | ≈ $216 |
| Tumble dryer | 3,000 W | 4 loads/week, 45 min | ≈ $75 |
| Air conditioner (window) | 1,000 W | 8 h/day, 4 months | ≈ $154 |
| Electric kettle | 3,000 W | 15 min/day | ≈ $44 |
| Refrigerator | 150 W avg | Continuous | ≈ $210 |
| Desktop PC | 200 W | 8 h/day | ≈ $93 |
| LED bulb | 9 W | 5 h/day | ≈ $2.63 |
| Phone charger | 5 W | 3 h/day | ≈ $0.88 |
Anything producing heat or moving air and water dominates. Electronics and lighting, post-LED, are close to rounding errors by comparison.
Standby power — real, but small
Standby draw, sometimes called vampire or phantom load, is genuine. Devices that stay warm waiting for a remote signal, chargers left plugged in, and appliances with clocks or displays all draw a small continuous current.
Estimates commonly put it at something like 5–10% of a household's consumption, which is not nothing. But the framing misleads: most of that figure comes from a handful of larger always-on devices — set-top boxes, games consoles left in rest mode, older televisions — rather than from the phone chargers people are told to unplug.
The efficient version of this advice is to target the few devices drawing 10–20 W continuously rather than the many drawing under 1 W. A smart power strip on an entertainment centre does more than a year of diligently unplugging chargers.
Measure rather than guess
A plug-in energy monitor costs little and settles arguments. Rating plates show maximum draw and most appliances cycle, so measured consumption is often far below the label — and occasionally, with older refrigerators and freezers, considerably above what you would expect.
Understanding your actual rate
The number to use is your marginal rate — what one additional kilowatt-hour costs — and it is frequently higher than the headline figure.
Bills separate energy supply from delivery or distribution charges, and both are usually per-kWh. Using only the supply rate can understate the true cost by a third or more. Divide your total bill by kWh consumed for a realistic average.
Tiered tariffs charge more once you pass a monthly threshold, so extra consumption at the margin costs more than the average. Time-of-use tariffs vary by hour, sometimes dramatically, which makes shifting high-draw activities — laundry, dishwashing, EV charging — into off-peak hours a genuine saving with no change in behaviour beyond timing.
If you have a time-of-use tariff, that shift is usually the single largest saving available without buying anything.
Key considerations
- Use your marginal rate including delivery charges, not just the energy component.
- Rating plates show maximum draw; cycling appliances use much less in practice.
- Target heating, cooling, drying and water heating — that is where the money is.
- On a time-of-use tariff, shifting laundry and dishwashing off-peak saves without any sacrifice.
- A plug-in monitor is the cheapest way to find an unexpectedly expensive appliance.
- Standby power is worth addressing at the few large always-on devices, not at chargers.
- Older refrigerators and freezers are common hidden costs — they run continuously and degrade with age.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Assuming unplugging phone chargers makes a meaningful difference — it is under a dollar a year.
- Using only the supply rate and understating the true cost per kWh.
- Trusting the rating plate for an appliance that cycles.
- Ignoring the refrigerator because it is always on and therefore invisible.
- Overlooking a time-of-use tariff that would reward simply doing laundry later.
- Comparing appliances on wattage alone without accounting for hours of use.
Frequently asked questions
Sources & references
Written and fact-checked by the CalcProLabs Editorial Team. Read our calculation methodology and editorial policy.
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