How much does my electric fan cost to run? I've been leaving mine on all night and am worried about my energy bill
We’ve been running our electric fan all night for the past week to try and stay cool during the heat wave, but I’m slightly concerned about how much money this is going to add to our energy bill.
We’ve had it on throughout the night and during the day at weekends - how can I work out how much is it likely to add to our bills?
Hot air: Should I be worried about the amount of money my electric fan is costing?
Rebecca Rutt, of This is Money, replies: The weather has been exceptionally hot this week with the warmest June day recorded since 1976 on Wednesday and temperatures hitting 33.9C in London.
As the majority of UK homes aren’t fitted with air conditioning units, to combat the rising temperatures many people will have been relying on electric fans to try and stay cool.
There has even been a run on electric fans and almost all major retailers have sold out as desperate consumers try and get hold of one.
If you’ve got one at home, and it's been on a lot recently, you may now be wondering how much this might add to your electricity bills.
The exact cost to your bills depends on a few factors. The first is the kind of fan you have and the amount of energy it uses. To find this out you need to check the ‘wattage’ or number of watts as it's more commonly known as this tells you the average amount of power the fan needs to operate.
Will I be hit with a massive bill from running my electric fan every night this week?
Secondly, the price will depend on the number of hours you’re using the fan for and lastly the kind of energy tariff you are signed up to and the price per unit of electricity you pay.
We asked Energyhelpline to estimate the average cost and a spokesperson said running a fan for 12 hours a night would cost between 5p and 14p in total.
This is worked out by taking an average fan, which has a watt of between 25 and 75, and looking at the average price of a unit of energy from a big six provider at 16p.
To work out the cost, it multiplied the cost of the unit of energy with the average watt for the fan and calculated that a fan with a wattage of 25 would cost an average of £0.004 per hour while a fan with a wattage of 75 would cost £0.012 per hour.
Therefore if the fan was running for 12 hours a night, this would cost between 5 and 14p and for an entire week this would add on a maximum of 98p to your electricity bill – if you ran the fan for 12 hours every night.
To work out exactly how much your fan is costing you can check this energy use calculator which tells you how much you will pay per hour depending on the watt and how much your pay per electricity unit.
Alternatively if you have a smart meter you can easily see how much energy it is using by looking at the difference between your usage when the fan is on and then when it is switched off.
By 2020 all homes that want them will have smart meters so fears about unexpectedly high bills after using more energy than usual will be a thing of the past.
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