- How much electricity does a water heater use?

A water heater accounts for around a 14% of the total amount of electricity used at home.

To calculate the electricity usage of a water heater it is not that straight forward.

It is possible to get the water heater power consumption from it’s specifications label and with that value calculate the approximate electricity cost. For that, on the next section, we have left a handy calculator.

But, a the heater it is not drawing electricity all the time. A water heater stops drawing electricity once the water is hot enough and starts drawing electricity again once the water heat drops below a predetermined threshold or if it needs to heat up incoming cold water.

Also, the electricity consumption will depend on the water heater settings so the only way to get an accurate value for the electricity consumption of a water heater it is to use a device that can measure the electricity consumption over time.

If your water heater it is plugged to a socket, it is possible to use a plug in power meter to get an exact electricity consumption value. On the video below we are explaining what is a plug in power meter.

Electricity usage and cost calculator

The calculator below can be used to calculate and approximate power and cost consumption of a water heater over time.

You just need to adjust the values in the PARAMETERS section to your requirements and the calculator will automatically display the RESULTS section.

A few other examples from our ‘Electricity usage calculators‘ page that may be of your interest:

Refrigerator

Freezer

Computer monitor

Wi-Fi router

Laptop

Additional information

Not everybody it is familiar with terms like Watts, Kilowatts or Kilowatt hours so if you would like to learn more about them, have a look to this video that we have prepared for you.

All our videos can be found in YouTube, in both English and Spanish languages.

If you are looking for saving electricity at home, have a look to this video where we provide some useful tips to reduce the electricity consumption and decrease the electricity bill.

Electricity conservation - Save and conserve energy

Energy conservation can be defined as the decision and the act of using less energy

Energy conservation both benefit you and the environment

The act of saving and conserving electricity does benefit you because you will be paying less on your energy bills.

And it also does benefit the environment because conserving electricity prevents any unnecessary waste of natural resources.

Now, at individual level it may not look worth to try to save a few watts here or there.

Still, every little counts and if hundreds or thousands of us do save a little every time, it will make an important contribution towards conserving our natural resources.

For example, if 9000 households would manage to save as little as 10 Watts per hour (0,01 kWh) worth of electricity per day, that would add to 32850 Kilowatt hour (kWh) per year.

That is a considerable amount of electricity, but let’s add additional perspectives for clarity:

Assuming an average cost of 0,18 euro (or dollars, or pounds, or any other currency) we would collectively be saving nearly 6000 euro per year.
To produce 32850 kWh of electricity it is necessary to use around 17 metric tons of coal or 56 barrels of residual fuel oil.

Have a look to this page for more information about the amount of resources needed to produce electricity.

In any case it is clear that small energy savings do really count when looking into the bigger picture.

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