Electronics running costs
EIA data · June 202614 appliances, ranked by what they cost over a year at the U.S. average of 18.34¢ per kilowatt-hour. Run together at the default usage shown on each page they come to about $376 a year.
2 of these draw power for only part of the time they are switched on — drawing in bursts rather than steadily — so the figures below apply a duty cycle to each. Ignoring that is the most common reason published estimates run high.
What drives cost in this category
Hours, not watts. Nothing in this category draws much by household standards, but several items are never switched off. A 10 W router billed 8,760 hours a year costs about as much as a 1,200 W microwave used daily.
The change with the most leverage
Find the always-on devices that do not need to be. A games console in a fast-resume mode, a desktop asleep rather than shut down, or an old set-top box recording continuously can each draw ten to twenty watts around the clock.
What people get wrong
Modern standby is genuinely small. A television draws well under a watt when off, so unplugging it saves pennies a year. The advice to unplug chargers survives from an era when standby draw was twenty times higher than it is now.
Electronics ranked by yearly cost
| Appliance | Typical W | Duty | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaming PC | 400 | — | $107 |
| Desktop computer | 150 | — | $80.33 |
| Game console | 180 | — | $36.15 |
| Television | 100 | — | $33.47 |
| Projector | 250 | — | $33.47 |
| Laptop | 50 | — | $26.78 |
| Computer monitor | 30 | — | $16.07 |
| WiFi router | 10 | — | $16.07 |
| Security camera | 6 | — | $9.64 |
| Soundbar | 35 | — | $9.37 |
| Smart speaker | 3 | — | $4.82 |
| Streaming device | 4 | — | $1.07 |
| Printer | 500 | 15% | $1.00 |
| Tablet | 12 | 40% | 96.4¢ |