By the Home Savings Calculator team · 29 August 2026 · 7 min read
The rating plate shows peak draw. Plenty of appliances only pull that in bursts: a fridge compressor runs perhaps a fifth of the time, an oven cycles once it reaches temperature, a washing machine draws heavily only while heating water.
Ignoring that is how a 150W fridge gets reported as using 1,300kWh a year, roughly five times reality. The share of running time an appliance actually draws full power is called its duty cycle, and it changes the answer more than any other factor.
The appliance running cost calculator applies a duty cycle to each appliance and ranks them by annual cost at your own unit rate. Every wattage is editable if you have the real figure from the plate.
A vented or condenser dryer draws around 2.5kW and runs close to flat out for a two-hour cycle, so roughly 4kWh a load. At current rates that is about £1 every time you use it, and comfortably over £100 a year for a household drying two or three times a week.
A heat pump dryer uses roughly half the energy, because it recycles heat rather than venting it. It is the one appliance where paying more up front reliably pays back.
A kettle draws around 3kW — briefly. Three minutes of boiling is about 0.15kWh, a few pence. It feels expensive because of the draw, but the duration keeps the annual figure modest unless you boil constantly.
An electric oven is the opposite: a lower draw sustained for far longer, and it cycles at temperature so it averages well below its rating. Over a year it typically costs several times what the kettle does.
Both are dominated by water heating, not the motor. That means temperature is the lever: a 40°C wash is typically under 1kWh, while 60°C can be roughly double. Dropping the temperature is the single biggest saving available on either machine.
Eco cycles look slow because they are — they wash longer at a lower temperature, trading time for energy. That is why they use less despite running for hours.
Fridges and freezers are modest per hour but run every hour of the year, which is why they usually land mid-table rather than at the bottom. An old unit with tired door seals can use several times what a modern one does.
Standby is largely a solved problem. Modern devices draw well under a watt, so the whole house on standby is worth a few units a year — real money is in the heat-producing appliances above. If your total looks high once you have ranked them, cross-check the whole bill in the electricity cost calculator and read average electricity usage by household size to see where you sit.
If most of your load runs during daylight, that changes the case for generation — see is solar worth it.
