How do I work out how much an appliance is costing me in electricity?

Answer 1

Find out what power rating it has, in watts. Often its written on a label. A normal bulb might be 100W for example. Or a kettle could be 1,2 or 3KW.

Look at a recent electricity bill for the cost per kilowatt hour.
i.e. 1000 watts costs, say, 16p.

So, a 100W lamp bulb would cost (100/1000) * 16p = 1.6p per hour. Multiply by how many hours its on per week, say 20, and it costs you 32p per week to run.

Some devices like TVs radios videos draw almost as much power when they are on "standby" as when they are operating fully. To save money (and the planet) unplug them when not in use. Or switch them off.

I went round all my appliances recently and worked out how much each is costing me in a typical quarterly electricy bill. Its quite an eye-opener. I'm much more careful about turning things off nowadays.

Answer 2

Somewhere on the appliance it should say what KW rating it is.
If it is rated 1KW then it will use 1 unit of electric an hour. A 3kw heater will use 3 units of electric in 1 hour if it is run at full power. A lightbulb rated at 100 watt will run for 10 hours to use 1kw of electric = 1 unit.You will get the price per unit from your electric bill.
Multiply the kw by the unit cost by the number of hours you use the appliance and this will give you the cost.

Answer 3

Most all new appliances come with an Energy Guide or Star raiting (a yellow tag). If you have an older appliance and want to know exactly how much electricity it is using you can go to:

energystar.com (try this one first and search for your appliance)

if you can't find it there try: energyguide.com

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Hi, get an energy monitor from B&Q £24.00 or LIDLS £6.99 simply plug it into to your socket to find out how many kWh of energy you use whilst running an electric appliance. By programming the rate per hour you can see the total cost of your consumption at a glance in a small lcd screen. It gives you voltage, strength of electric current, watt, maximum power,energy consumption in kWh and last but not least cost. I hope this helps you.

Answer 5

Here's a device that is foolproof to measure the electricty used. Just plug in the appliance, etc and read the meter. Unfortunately, stoves, washers, dryers, and water heaters can't plug into this device.

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/measure.html

Answer 6

b and q have a great offer on just now you buy a heater and they give you a free plug in adaptor that tells you how much lecky you are using.
This device sells at about £28 so when you buy a heater you get this free they sell heaters for £27 so it seems ok deal!


Anyway to save you buying a new heater have you tried asking your appliance how much its using?