Electricity Cost Calculator - Appliance Cost Estimator

Electricity Cost Calculator

This calculator turns an appliance's power rating into a cost figure. Enter the wattage, how many hours a day it runs, and your price per kilowatt-hour, and it returns the energy used per day in kWh along with the cost per day, per month, and per year. Picking a device from the built-in appliance list fills in a typical wattage for you, so you do not need to know the exact figure in advance.

How the cost is calculated

Power consumption can be entered in watts or kilowatts using the unit toggle next to the field. The watt value is divided by 1000 to get kilowatts, then multiplied by the daily usage hours to get kilowatt-hours used per day. Multiplying that figure by your price per kWh gives the daily cost. The monthly figure is the daily cost times 30, and the yearly figure is the daily cost times 365. Both are fixed multipliers, so they are estimates rather than a match for your exact billing cycle.

Worked examples

A refrigerator rated at 150 watts that runs continuously (24 hours a day) uses 3.6 kWh per day: 150 divided by 1000, times 24. At $0.16 per kWh, that is $0.58 a day, $17.28 a month, and $210.24 a year.

A 2000-watt air conditioner used for 6 hours a day uses 12 kWh per day: 2000 divided by 1000, times 6. At the same $0.16 per kWh rate, that comes to $1.92 a day, $57.60 a month, and $700.80 a year. That is about three times the refrigerator's yearly cost, even though the air conditioner runs for a quarter of the hours.

Formula

kWh per day = (Watts / 1000) x Hours per day
Daily cost = kWh per day x Price per kWh
Monthly cost = Daily cost x 30
Yearly cost = Daily cost x 365

Common appliance wattages

The calculator's built-in presets cover the appliances people ask about most. At $0.16 per kWh, here is what each one costs to run for one hour.