Even though energy bills are on their way down, it's still worth knowing how much these bits of kit cost to run to keep cool as bills are still more expensive than they used to be
Many of us will likely be reaching for a fan over the next few days, as heatwave conditions hit parts of the UK - but how much does it cost to run one?
Temperatures are set to spike as high as 28C in parts of the country this week with some areas of the UK seeing temperatures in the mid-20s. Fans are often the go to for many in the hot weather and a few years ago having your fan on for a few hours in the day or overnight wasn't a big deal.
Even though energy bills are on their way down, it's still worth knowing how much these bits of kit cost to run to keep cool as bills are still more expensive than they used to be. To help Brits understand the costs, the energy experts at Heat Pumps have shared new data on how much it costs to run a fan to help Brits struggling with the heat this week.
To know exactly how much your fan costs to run, the energy experts say you'll need to know the wattage of your fan. This should be shown on the fan itself or the instructions leaflet. Once you know this, you will need to convert it into kilowatt-hours (kW). This may sound complicated but all you need to do is divide the the wattage by 1,000 to give the amount of energy it uses per hour.
To be able to work out the cost, you will need to know how much you pay for one unit of energy. Currently, the Ofgem energy price cap as of April 2024 for direct debit customers, the unit rate for electricity is 24.50p per kWh. You will need to then multiply the cost of a unit of energy by the kW output of your fan and that will be how much it is costing to run your fan.
According to the energy experts at Heat Pumps, if you are using a typical 73W box fan to catch some sleep during these warm nights it will use 0.073 kWh of electricity every hour. If you were to run it for nine hours that's around 0.65 kWh per night. Over the course of one week, this would add up to roughly 4.6 kWh. At 24.5p per kWh, that works out to be around £1.12 a week.
Table fans, on the other hand, typically use around 0.1 kWh. Based on that and the current energy tariffs, running a table for nine hours a night all week would cost roughly £1.54. With portable fans, it will cost you only 15p for the whole week if you run it for at least nine hours each night.