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Appliance Running Cost Calculator

Find out how much any appliance costs to run per hour, day, week, and year.

W
hr/day
p/kWh
Running Costs

Formulas

  • Energy/hr = Power (kW)
  • Energy/day = Power (kW) × hours
  • Cost/day = Energy/day × tariff (£/kWh)
  • Cost/year = Cost/day × 365

For business

Why this matters for businesses

Single-appliance running cost looks trivial until you multiply by the number of installations, the hours and the years. A 200 W always-on retail display network across 50 sites runs to roughly 87,000 kWh per year, which at 25 p/kWh is over £21,000 of spend that nobody is targeting in a budget review. Catering, refrigeration and IT are the three estates where this maths bites hardest, and where the small kit hides in plain sight on the bill.

The unit rate is only part of the cost. Non-commodity charges (DUoS, TNUoS, BSUoS, CCL, RO, FiT, supplier margin) typically make up around half of a business energy bill, so the true running cost of any always-on appliance is materially higher than the headline p/kWh suggests. For refrigeration in particular, where load runs 24/7 and degrades quietly with seal wear and compressor age, modelling the all-in cost is the only way to size the replacement business case fairly.

Purely Energy benchmarks running cost against tendered offers from 30+ suppliers, with every component (wholesale, NCC, supplier margin, our margin) shown separately on the same page. If you are presenting a refurbishment case to the board, we will give you the per-site running cost on the contract you actually have, and on the contract you could have under the best available tender, so the saving figure on the slide is defensible against scrutiny from finance and from procurement alike.