How much electricity does my clothes dryer use?

Question

How do I determine how much electricity my clothes dryer uses during a one hour drying cycle? Ultimately, I want to know how much one drying cycle costs. We use the high heat option, normally. This question also posted in Laundry & Cleaning area.

Answer 1

The average american dryer uses 5.5 kw. If the dryer runs for 1 hour you are using 5.5 KWh. If you are paying $0.10 per Kwh then the dryer is costing you $0.55 per hour to run.

Answer 2

If you want to do this to a good degree of accuracy, buy a current clamp, Hall effect sensor, Rogowski coil, or other such device that can measure the current going though a wire, see how much current it uses (generally a dryer will use the same current thoughout, since it's just heating and tumbling, vs a washer that changes from wash to rinse) and take that into consideration with the time you set the dryer for.

A raw sensor will probably only tell you amperage, you'd want to find something that measures watts, then check to see how much a KWh costs. In any case, this is for people who know their math and conversions, since the type of meter you buy may display only some information and not others.

A bit technical, sorry, but it's really the only way you can do this that I know of.

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
How much electricity does my clothes dryer use?
How do I determine how much electricity my clothes dryer uses during a one hour drying cycle? Ultimately, I want to know how much one drying cycle costs. We use the high heat option, normally. This question also posted in Laundry & Cleaning area.

Answer 4

You should have 10/2 or 10/3 wire going to the dryer from the breaker pannel and there should be a 30 Amp. double pole circuit breaker. From your question I am seeing you say " with capacity of 25W.". Do you mean that there is a 25Amp. breaker installed? If that is the case the breaker has gotten weak and should be changed to the 30 Amp. double pole breaker. You must ensure that the wire going to the dryer from the breaker pannel is at least number 10 wire as I have mentioned in my initial statement to handle that amperage. If the dryer runs with a light load without tripping the breaker it is more likely a breaker problem than a dryer problem.

Answer 5

The manual for it should tell you the number of "watts" it uses. If you don't have the manual, the number of watts might be labeled on the machine somewhere.

Take that number of watts and multiply it by the number of hours that youn use it (in this case, 1). That will give you the number of watt-hours you've used (which is a measure of electrical energy).

Then, take that number of watt-hours and multiply it by the amount of money per watt-hour that you pay. You might find that on your electric bill if you don't have it already. The number you get will be how much it costs to run your dryer.

Answer 6

its based on watts. a 100 watt light bulb uses 100 watts a hour. your dryer should have its wattage on it and multiply that times the time its on and thats your usage. check your electric bill as it shows how much your charged per wattage used. as an example, if your charged a nickel per 100 watts and you use 1500 watts on something for a hour it would be 15 x a nickel which is 75 cents a hour.

Answer 7

From 12 years ago, I remember calculating a dryer load at $0.30 and a washer load (hot water) at $0.60. Electric rates have gone up so figure about $0.50 per load nowadays.

Better yet, multiple your cost per kilowatt-hour (typically between $0.08 and $0.15) by about 5 kilowatt-hours.

There's also the clothes line .