Electricity usage calculator: what your appliances cost to run
Start from typical yearly use per appliance, change the figures to match your home, add anything that is missing and see which appliances cost the most a year.
Biggest users
Unit price times kWh. The standing charge is not included because it does not depend on how much you use. Heating and hot water are not in the list: use the heating calculator for those.
How the electricity usage is worked out
Each listed appliance starts with the average yearly consumption measured in the Household Electricity Survey, which monitored 250 English homes appliance by appliance. Those figures describe the 2010–11 stock, so a new A-rated fridge-freezer or an LED-lit home will use less. Replace any figure with the use on your own energy label, scaled to a year: the label gives kWh a year for fridges and freezers, kWh per 100 cycles for washing machines and dishwashers, and kWh per 1,000 hours for televisions.
For an appliance you add yourself, the yearly use is power × hours a day × days a year, plus the standby power for the rest of each day. The total is priced at the unit rate of the Ofgem price cap, which you can change to your own tariff.
Formula
- kWh a year = (watts × hours a day × days + standby watts × (24 − hours) × days) ÷ 1000
- Cost a year = kWh a year × unit price
- Saving from a new appliance = (old kWh − new kWh) × unit price
- Payback = price of the new appliance ÷ yearly saving
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find an appliance's power?
On the rating plate (often on the back or inside the door) or in the manual, in watts. For fridges and freezers the energy label gives kWh a year directly, which is more accurate than watts × hours. Washing machines and dishwashers show kWh per 100 cycles and televisions kWh per 1,000 hours, so scale those to your own use before typing them in.
Why is standby listed separately?
Devices left on standby, routers, chargers and set-top boxes draw power all day. The survey measured 47 to 81 W of constant load in typical homes; the default row uses 50 W.
Does the total match my bill?
Only for the appliances listed. Electric heating, hot water and charging an electric car can each use more than everything here combined.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser.
Reading the appliance list: where a UK household’s electricity goes
The calculator opens with thirteen rows: eleven common appliances and whole-home lighting, each with its yearly use as measured in the Household Electricity Survey, plus a row for standby. Added together they come to 3,718 kWh a year. At the price cap rate of 26.32p per kWh, that is £979 a year, or about £82 a month. The five biggest users in the default list are:
| Appliance | kWh a year | Cost a year | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lighting (whole home) | 537 | £141 | 14% |
| Standby, all devices (50 W) | 438 | £115 | 12% |
| Fridge-freezer | 427 | £112 | 11% |
| Tumble dryer | 394 | £104 | 11% |
| Chest freezer | 362 | £95 | 10% |
Make the list your own first
The default list is a catalogue, not a household. It includes a fridge, a fridge-freezer and a chest freezer, and your home may not have all three. Remove every row you do not have with the × button before reading the total. Then replace the figures you can check. For fridges and freezers the energy label gives the kWh a year directly. For washing machines and dishwashers it gives kWh per 100 cycles, and for televisions kWh per 1,000 hours, so multiply by how often you use them in a year. Either way, a figure for your own appliance is more reliable than an average, because the survey measured the appliances people owned in 2010–11.
That age matters most for lighting. The 537 kWh in the list was measured in 2010–11, before LED bulbs were the norm. If your bulbs are mostly LED, your lighting use is likely to be lower; type in your own estimate rather than relying on the survey figure.
Standby: the quiet row
Standby is the second-largest row, and it is easy to underestimate. A constant 50 W, the default, adds up to 438 kWh a year, or £115. The survey measured between 47 and 81 W of continuous background use in typical homes: routers, set-top boxes, chargers, appliances waiting on a remote. You can measure your own. Read the meter late at night when only the fridge and the background devices are on, then again an hour later; the difference in kWh, times 1,000, is your background load in watts. Or watch the live figure on a smart meter display.
Adding an appliance the list does not have
For anything else, use “Add your own appliance” and give its power, hours a day and days a year. A 2 kW electric heater used for 3 hours a day on 150 days uses 900 kWh, about £237 a year. That one heater would sit above every row in the default list. Appliances that cycle on and off, such as fridges, use far less than their rated power times 24 hours, which is why the label figure is better for them.
Replacing an appliance
In “Replacing an appliance?”, pick the row and type the new model’s yearly kWh: straight from the label for a fridge or freezer, or worked out from the per-cycle or per-hour figure for other appliances. The calculator prices the difference: every 100 kWh a year you save is worth about £26 at the cap rate. Add the price of the new appliance to see the payback. If the old appliance still works, the payback line shows how many years the new one takes to earn back its price through lower bills. When it needs replacing anyway, use the comparison to choose between models.
What the total leaves out
Only the unit rate is counted. The standing charge, £200.15 a year under the current cap, is paid whatever you use, so it is not shared out between appliances. Electric heating, hot water from an immersion heater and charging an electric car are not in the list and can each outweigh it. The heating calculator handles the first two.
The price matters too. The cap rate covers 1 October to 31 December 2026, and Ofgem notes there is no VAT on electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. If your tariff differs, type your own unit rate from your bill.
Checking against your bill
Your annual statement shows how many kWh you used over the last year. If the calculator’s total, after you have edited the list, is well below that figure, the gap is usually something not listed: heating, hot water, a second fridge in the garage, a hot tub, a fish tank or a home office. If it is well above, some of the survey figures probably overstate newer appliances.
If you are weighing up a heat pump, remember it adds to this bill. In the heating calculator’s default example, an air-source heat pump would use about 2,728 kWh of electricity a year. In England and Wales the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme offers grants towards installing one; check the current terms on that page.
Sources: DECC Household Electricity Survey (Table 3), Ofgem price cap rates.