How Much Electricity Do You Use?
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Yeah, you pay your electric bill every month, so you know how much you spend. But do you know what that money is powering? Would you have guessed that your electric kettle is one of your most power-hungry appliances? Or that your television is one of the least? Knowing where the electricity in your house or apartment is being burned will help you quickly fix the problem areas—saving you money every month and reducing your carbon-footprint.
The following is from Energy: Use Less–Save More by Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert.
The amount of electricity consumed varies hugely according to which appliance and model you use. Check out the list below to see which are the hungriest appliances. All figures given here are approximate – see your actual appliance for accurate figures.
| Appliance | Average watts used per hour |
|---|---|
| Low-energy light bulb | 11 |
| Extractor fan | 75 |
| Laptop computer | 75 |
| Conventional light bulb | 100 |
| Stereo | 100 |
| Television | 100 |
| Video recorder | 110 |
| Refrigerator | 125 |
| Desktop computer | 150 |
| Freezer | 300 |
| Hair dryer | 750 |
| Microwave | 750 |
| Vacuum cleaner | 800 |
| Toaster | 1,000 |
| Iron | 1,000 |
| Dishwasher | 1,000 |
| Small portable heater | 1,000 |
| Washing machine | 1,200 |
| Stovetop (1 burner) | 1,300 |
| Oil-filled heater | 2,000 |
| Fan heater | 2,000 |
| Large portable heater | 2,000 |
| Deep fryer | 2,000 |
| Oven | 2,150 |
| Electric kettle | 2,250 |
| Demand water heater | 3,000 |
| Electric shower unit | 8,000 |
| Stove (everything on) | 11,500 |
To test the actual electricity usage of your specific appliances, I suggest getting the Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor.
What do you unplug to save on electricity?
July 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
True enough, but remember that the final issue is total energy used. Something like an electric kettle may be power-hungry for so long as it is on and bringing water to a boil, but it is probably not used and on for terribly long each day. A TV, on the other hand, in so many homes, tends to be on for hours and hours, including when no one is paying attention to it. So if the electric kettle is on for 10 minutes to boil up water for tea, that’s a total of 375 watt-hours. A TV being on for 4 hours a day will add up to more than that. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if this list underestimates TVs, since the authors are in England and my guess is that the average TV size over there is smaller than the average TV in the U.S.
The Kill-A-Watt is nice because it’ll tell you both instantaneous power draw and cumulative draw over time.
I unplugged my TV about 15 years ago. I also unplugged my blender for a while, and was using a hand-crank blender to make my smoothies, but the clamp broke recently so I haven’t been able to use it. I’ll have to get it fixed or something.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
PS: I wonder what stereos they used for their estimate. I used my Kill-A-Watt to measure the small, bookshelf stereo at home, and it was only drawing something like 18 watts when on radio and maybe mid-20s when playing a cd. 100 watts sounds like too much for a stereo–but then I intentionally bought a stereo that uses less power. I guess there are lots of stereos out there that draw hundreds of watts per speaker.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Hey very nice blog!! Will add to feed reader :-)