What appliance uses the most electricity?

In a UAE home, air conditioning by a long way. After that it is water heating, then a tumble dryer if you use one, then the fridge because it never stops.

Does a kettle use a lot of electricity?

It draws a lot for a very short time. Five boils a day is a small fraction of a unit, which is far less than a fridge running quietly all day.

How much does a tumble dryer cost to run?

It is one of the heaviest appliances in a home, at around 2,500 watts for an hour or more per load. In this climate, drying outside costs nothing and takes about as long.

Is standby power worth switching off?

It is usually one to three per cent of a bill. Worth tidying up, but the thermostat and the water heater are worth many times more attention.

How do I find an appliance wattage?

On the rating label, usually on the back or underside, or in the manual. Fridges cycle on and off, so use an average draw rather than the compressor label.

Is it cheaper to run appliances at night?

Only if you are on a tariff that charges differently by time. Check your bill. If there is a single rate, the time of day does not change the cost.

Appliance Running Cost Calculator

Appliance

Or type your own wattage

Leave at zero to use the appliance chosen above.

Hours per use

hrs

A kettle is about 0.05. A fridge is 24.

Times used a day

Your electricity rate

AED/kWh

From your DEWA bill.

Days a year it is used

Use 180 for something only used in summer.

Your answer

Cost a year

AED 0

Put your electricity rate in above and this fills in.

Power used: 2000 W
Units per use: 0.2 kWh
Cost per use: AED 0
Cost a month: AED 0
Units a year: 365 kWh

Fridges and freezers cycle on and off, so use their average draw rather than the number on the compressor label.

Appliance Running Cost Calculator for the UAE

This tool works out what one appliance costs to run. Pick it from the list, say how often you use it, and put in your own electricity rate.

The point is comparison. Most people are wrong about which appliances cost them money, and seeing two side by side settles it quickly.

The answer that usually surprises people is that a small thing running constantly beats a big thing running briefly.

Big draw or long hours

The mistake almost everybody makes is judging an appliance by how powerful it sounds.

A kettle is 2,000 watts, which is a lot. It runs for three minutes. Five boils a day is about a sixth of a unit.

A fridge is 120 watts on average, which sounds like nothing. It runs all day, every day, all year. That is far more units than the kettle.

So the question is never how big the number on the label is. It is that number multiplied by the hours.

This is why air conditioning dominates a UAE bill. It is both: a large draw and very long hours.

The appliances that actually cost money here

In rough order for a home in this climate.

Air conditioning
Not on the list above because it deserves its own tool, but it is the answer to almost every question about a UAE electricity bill.
Water heater
Large and it cycles all day to keep a tank hot. In winter this is a real number. In summer it should be switched off.
Tumble dryer
The heaviest common appliance. In this climate it is also the most avoidable, because clothes dry outside in an hour.
Fridge and freezer
Modest draw, constant hours, all year. An old inefficient one is worth replacing on running cost alone.
Oven
Big draw, real hours if you cook every evening. Less than people fear, more than a kettle.
Everything else
Televisions, computers, lamps and chargers. Individually small, and worth tidying up only after the items above are dealt with.

The tumble dryer question

This is worth its own section because the answer is so clear here and so many homes ignore it.

A tumble dryer is around 2,500 watts and runs for an hour or more per load. That is well over two units a load, several times a week.

Outside, in this climate, a load of washing dries in a fraction of that time for nothing. There is no season here when line drying does not work.

The usual objections are dust and space. Dust is real, which is why a shaded balcony or a covered drying area matters. Space is a fair point in a flat.

But if you have anywhere at all to hang clothes, the dryer is the easiest large saving in the house, and it needs no equipment, no spending and no habit anybody has to remember.

Standby, and how much it really matters

Standby power is the electricity used by things that are switched on but doing nothing.

A television on standby, a set top box, chargers plugged in with nothing attached, a microwave showing a clock. Each is a few watts.

A few watts sounds like nothing, and per item it is. But standby runs twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year, and a modern home has a lot of items.

Added up, standby in a well equipped home is usually somewhere between one and three per cent of the bill.

That is worth tidying up and it is not worth worrying about. If you are trying to reduce a UAE bill, the thermostat and the water heater are worth twenty times as much attention.

Using the yearly figure to make decisions

The most useful output here is the cost per year, because that is the number to compare against a purchase price.

If an old fridge costs a certain amount a year to run, and a new efficient one would cost noticeably less, the difference tells you how long a replacement takes to pay for itself.

The same applies to a dryer against a drying rack, or an old air conditioner against a new inverter.

What it does not include is the repair cost of keeping something old alive, which usually makes replacement look better than the electricity figure alone suggests.

And it does not include how well things work. An appliance that has stopped doing its job properly is costing you more than the number here in ways that do not show on a bill.

Questions people ask

What appliance uses the most electricity?: In a UAE home, air conditioning by a long way. After that it is water heating, then a tumble dryer if you use one, then the fridge because it never stops.
Does a kettle use a lot of electricity?: It draws a lot for a very short time. Five boils a day is a small fraction of a unit, which is far less than a fridge running quietly all day.
How much does a tumble dryer cost to run?: It is one of the heaviest appliances in a home, at around 2,500 watts for an hour or more per load. In this climate, drying outside costs nothing and takes about as long.
Is standby power worth switching off?: It is usually one to three per cent of a bill. Worth tidying up, but the thermostat and the water heater are worth many times more attention.
How do I find an appliance wattage?: On the rating label, usually on the back or underside, or in the manual. Fridges cycle on and off, so use an average draw rather than the compressor label.
Is it cheaper to run appliances at night?: Only if you are on a tariff that charges differently by time. Check your bill. If there is a single rate, the time of day does not change the cost.

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