Household electricity, computed

What it actually costs to run

Almost every “cost to run” figure online multiplies the watts on the label by the hours you use it. That is the wrong sum for anything with a thermostat — it overstates a refrigerator by 3.1×. This site does the right one, at your state's rate.

Break down your bill All 85 appliances
US average rate
18.34¢

per kWh · +5.0% on last year

Typical bill
$1,938

a year · 10,566 kWh

Appliances costed
85

each with its own duty cycle

States priced
51

EIA, June 2026

The correction this site exists to make

A refrigerator’s label says 150 W. Multiply that by 24 hours and 365 days and you get 1,314 kWh a year — the figure most sites publish. But the compressor only runs about a third of the time, so the real answer is 420 kWh, and the real cost is $77 rather than $241.

What most sites publish1,314 kWh — nameplate × hours$241
What a refrigerator actually costs420 kWh — 32% duty cycle$77

Why the gap exists, and how to measure your own →

Start here

The most expensive things in a house

At the US average rate. These are where a bill is won or lost — everything below the top ten is rounding error by comparison.

Crypto mining rig26,280 kWh a year$4,820
Electric furnace9,012 kWh a year$1,653
EV charging (Level 1 wall socket)3,747 kWh a year$687
EV charging (Level 2 home)3,541 kWh a year$649
Hot tub3,285 kWh a year$602
Pool heat pump3,139 kWh a year$576
Electric water heater2,720 kWh a year$499
Heat pump (heating)2,307 kWh a year$423
Central air conditioner2,295 kWh a year$421
Pool pump2,160 kWh a year$396

See all 85 →

Recent guides

Why the usual figures are wrong

The error is not carelessness, it is a shortcut. Nameplate × hours is a calculation you can do knowing nothing at all about the appliance: read the sticker, guess the hours, multiply. It produces a large, alarming number that reads as authoritative. Correcting it requires knowing how the appliance behaves — and that behaviour is the whole story.

Anything that holds a temperature switches itself off once it gets there. A refrigerator’s compressor runs about a third of the time. A thermostatic space heater cycles once the room is warm. A water heater’s elements fire only to replace what was drawn off or lost through the tank wall. Averaged over the hours they are in service, all three draw a fraction of what the plate says — and they are exactly the appliances that dominate a bill, which is what makes the shortcut expensive.

The appliances where the shortcut is right are the ones that simply run until you stop them: kettles, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners, lights. This site computes both figures on every page so you can see which case you are in. The full explanation, with all 85 appliances measured both ways →

What this site is built on

Two public datasets, both US Government works in the public domain, both stored in the repository with a checksum so a published figure can be traced to the exact file it came from:

  • EIA Electric Power Monthly, table 5.6.A and 5.6.B — average electricity price by state and end-use sector, June 2026, with the same month a year earlier and the year to date. This is where every rate on the site comes from.
  • EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, table CE4.6 — how much electricity households actually use, by end use and by census division. These are conditional means: the space-heating figure is the average among homes that heat with electricity, not a blend across homes that do not. That distinction is what lets the bill tool reconcile.

Appliance ratings and duty cycles are typical published values and engineering figures for a stated operating assumption. Seven appliances carry a regulated annual figure — FTC EnergyGuide, ENERGY STAR, or a survey mean — and the build fails if the computed total falls outside the published range. Every one of those checks is listed.

Common questions

How much does it cost to run a refrigerator?
About $77 a year at the US average rate of 18.34¢ per kWh — 420 kWh. Most published answers say three times that, because they multiply the 150 W on the plate by 24 hours and 365 days. The compressor only runs about a third of the time.
What uses the most electricity in a house?
In an all-electric home: space heating, water heating and air conditioning, in that order, and together they are roughly two-thirds of the bill. The EIA puts water heating at 2,706 kWh a year among households that heat water with electricity, and cooling at 2,318 kWh among those that run air conditioning. Everything else — lighting, electronics, cooking, laundry — is the remaining third combined.
Why is my electric bill so high?
Four causes account for nearly all of it: electric heating engaging more than you expect (especially backup resistance heat on a heat pump), electric water heating, air conditioning, and one forgotten always-on appliance such as a second refrigerator in a garage. The bill tool subtracts what those should cost from what you actually paid and shows you the remainder.
How much does one watt cost per year?
$1.61 at the US average rate, if it is drawn continuously — there are 8,760 hours in a year, so one watt is 8.76 kWh. That single conversion turns any always-on device’s idle wattage straight into an annual figure, and it is the most useful number on this site.
Are these figures accurate for my home?
They are accurate for a typical unit under a stated assumption, and every page states its assumption. They cannot see your specific appliance’s age, your climate, your tariff or your habits — which is why every page has sliders, and why the measurement guide exists. Where a figure matters enough to act on, measure it.
Where does the data come from?
Electricity prices from the EIA’s Electric Query Power Monthly (June 2026); household consumption from the EIA’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Both are US Government works in the public domain, stored here with checksums so any figure traces to the exact file it came from.