Washing machine electricity cost

Estimate the cost of each load and of a year's washing from the energy your machine uses per cycle.

Calculator

Appliance type

Used as the name in your comparison. It does not fill in any values.

Energy per cycle (kWh)

From the label, manual or a plug-in energy monitor, for the program you use.

Cycles per week

Loads or runs per week. Decimals are fine, for example 3.5.

Electricity price per kWh

From your bill or supplier. Use the price per kWh, for example 0.15.

Currency

Changes the currency symbol only. No exchange rates are applied.

How to find your price on your bill

Where your bill shows them, add up the charges billed per kWh, such as supply (or generation) and delivery. These are the charges that grow when an appliance runs.
Leave out fixed monthly charges, such as a customer or service charge. They generally stay the same however much electricity you use.
If the price is in cents, divide by 100: 15.5¢ per kWh is 0.155.
Only a total amount and total kWh? Dividing the amount by the kWh gives a rough all-in average. Because it includes fixed fees and taxes, it may overestimate the extra cost of running an appliance.
If your price changes by time of day or with how much you use, enter the price that applies to most of your use.

For comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes average electricity prices by state. Your own bill gives a closer estimate.

Fill in the fields above to see your estimate.

Estimated results

Fill in the fields to see the estimated energy use and cost.

How the estimate works

Weekly energy is the energy per cycle multiplied by your cycles per week. A year is the weekly figure × 365 ÷ 7, and an average month is a year ÷ 12, the same conventions used everywhere on this site. The cost per cycle is simply the energy per cycle multiplied by your price per kWh.

Finding the energy per cycle

Energy labels in the UK and EU give the energy for 100 cycles of the eco program. Divide that figure by 100 to get kWh per cycle.
If a label gives yearly kWh and states how many loads a year it assumes, divide the yearly figure by that number of loads.
A plug-in energy monitor can measure the program you actually use.

What changes the energy per cycle

The program, wash temperature and load all matter. Hotter programs use more electricity because the machine heats the water itself. If your machine takes hot water from your home's water heater, the energy used to heat that water is used by the water heater instead and is not included here.

Example

With an illustrative 1 kWh per cycle and 4 cycles a week, weekly use is 4 kWh and yearly use is 4 × 365 ÷ 7 = 208.57 kWh. At an illustrative $0.20 per kWh, each load costs $0.20 and a year costs $41.71. Enter your own figures for your estimate.

Clothes dryers

A dryer uses its own energy for each load. Estimate it with the clothes dryer running cost calculator, then compare both on your dashboard.