Knowing the running costs of your electrical appliances is one of the first steps in making your home energy efficient. The bill payer may end up annoying everyone by going round the house turning things off. However knowing how much power your appliances are using and the typical costs helps you prioritise where you can save and what to invest for in the future.

There are many different options available:

• Reducing the amount of time your appliances are on
  • Turning off devices when not needed
  • Controlling how long they are on
  • Changing how you use your power, salad vs roast dinner, fresh bread vs toast, not washing clothes so often etc
  • Full shutdown not standby
• Invest in more energy efficient appliances
• Using renewable energy – solar power, wind power, biomass (using wood burning stoves etc)

Each replacement has their environmental impact but a key starting point has to be the running cost of electrical appliances.

That is why we have included a running costs calculator for electrical devices.

Running costs calculator

Enter the hours used per day, the power rating for your appliance and the price you pay per kWh for your electricity.

Hours Used Per Day: Enter how many hours the device is being used on average per day, if the power consumption is lower than 1 hour per day enter as a decimal. (For example: 30 minutes per day is 0.5)

Power Use (Watts): Enter the average power consumption of the device in watts.

Price (kWh): Enter the cost you are paying on average per kilowatt hour. We have entered the typical cost of 10p as £0.10.. To find your exact price check your electricity bill. The price does not include the standing charge. Enter the numbers and click calculate.

For example a modern energy saving light bulb uses about 11 Watts. If it’s on for say 10 hours a day, the cost is about £4 per year.

An old style incandescent bulb is rated at 60 Watts and will cost about £22 per year for usage.

Here are some typical power consumptions for different appliances:

Some devices are difficult to calculate manually. For example working out how much an electric oven costs to run is difficult as the power consumption will rise and fall. An electric oven will have a cycle of use where it will use full power while it warms up but then this falls once the oven has reached the required temperature. The best you can do is estimate how long the oven may have been at full power then work out an average.

Use an energy monitor to work this out more accurately – see Energy use monitor from ECO Arcade

Further reading

How much electricity am I using?

Energy use calculator

Electricity Running Costs Calculator

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