Appliance running costs and smart use
Understanding how much it costs to run various appliances and using them smartly will save you money on your energy bill.
The key concept here is that any appliance that is using more electricity than it needs to, even what might seem a realtively small amount each hour, is going to add a sizable chunk to your electricity bill over a year.
There are three main ways that appliances could be helping you waste your money.
1. Appliances not working properly
A classic example would be a fridge that has bad door seals, has lost some gas or has a broken thermostat or controller. The fridge will still appear to be working, but will be running a lot more often, or even continuously, to maintain cold temperatures inside. This could double or triple the annual cost of using that fridge.
This sort of waste of energy can be difficult to track down in a house, but is often the culprit if your electricity bill has jumped suddenly without anything else like the number of people in living in your house or the hours they are at home changing.
2. Appliances being left on when not needed
The two biggest culprits here are heat pumps and heated towel rails. You wouldn't dream of leaving an electric heater on in a room all the time so it was warm when you needed to use it, but that is just what people do with heat pumps and heated towel rails. In both cases, just using them when you need them can save you a decent amount of money every year.
Sometimes it is easy to forget to switch things off. Using timers and thermostats properly can help with this and can take the hassle out of using heaters.
3. Appliances that use electricity when you think they are off
This is called standby electricity. Most appliances that you can switch off with a remote keep using electricity, slowly but steadily, often without you realising.
The average household could be saving around 4% on their electricity bill if appliances on standby were switched off. [1.] Across New Zealand, this saving could add up to $130 million a year.
Did you know it takes more electricity to keep a DVD player in standby mode for a year than most use for playing DVDs during that year?
Overnight, microwaves, TVs and DVD players continuously consume electricity. If your appliances' lights and clocks are on, they're using electricity.
Turning off appliances at the wall when you're not using them will make a noticeable saving to your energy bill over a year.
Your home entertainment products account for around half of standby electricity use in the home. These include your:
- Televisions
- Audio equipment
- DVD players
- Games consoles
- Set-top boxes.
Other products that could be wasting electricity in standby mode could include:
- Computers
- Home office equipment
- Microwaves
- Washing machines
- Dishwashers.
Working out running costs
Different appliances work in different ways, so there is no set way to work out a running cost for each individual appliance in your home.
For simple appliances that use a set amount of electricty the whole time they are on, like heaters, kettles, toasters, heated towel rails etc. you can do a simple calculation to work out their running costs:
- look for the place on the appliance (often a small sticker or plate round the back or underneath) that tells you all about it
- there will be a electricity demand figure in Watts (W) or kiloWatts (kW)
- if it is in Watts, divide by 1,000 to get kW
- then multiply the kW figure by .24 to find out how much the appliance costs in cents to run for an hour. 24 cents is the current average price of a unit of electricity (a kilowatt hour or kWh).
For more complex appliances that use a varying amount of energy over time, like a fridge switching on and off, or a stereo that has different functions that use different amounts of electricity, a simple electricity meter is the best option.
These meters are available from hardware stores. They go between the wall socket and any plug-in appliance and allow you to see how much electricity the appliance is using at a moment in time. They can also track energy consumption over a day, week or longer.
More information
Notes:
[1] Isaacs, N,P (ed). 2006. Energy Use in New Zealand Households: Report on Year 10 of the Household Energy End-Use Project. Wellington: BRANZ.
