What's your electricity bill actually made of?
Work out where your monthly electricity bill goes, appliance by appliance — then find out which ones are actually worth changing. Most calculators multiply one rate by a guess; this one models the delivery charge, the fixed monthly fee, taxes, and tiered or time-of-use pricing, because together those are often a third of a smaller bill.
How to use this page
- 1List what you run — and how many hours a day each one runs.
- 2Enter your rates — off your latest statement — the defaults are averages.
- 3Check it against a real bill — the gap is the load you haven't listed.
What this estimate assumes
- Average watts for the hours you set, not nameplate ratings.
- Figures typical of the appliance class, not your model or its age.
- A flat 30.44-day month — real bills swing with the weather.
- Only what you've listed; heating, cooling and standby are easy to miss.
- On time-of-use, the peak-usage share is yours to enter.
Set how many hours a day each one actually runs — that's what drives the estimate. Sorted by what uses the most energy.
About 25% below the U.S. average household — expected if you haven't listed heating, cooling or a water heater yet.
2Your rates
Copy these off your own bill — the defaults are U.S. averages and will be wrong for you by a meaningful amount.
3Estimated monthly bill
- Supply 643 kWh @ $0.078
- $50.14
- Delivery 643 kWh @ $0.062
- $39.86
- Fixed service charge
- $15.00
- Subtotal
- $105.00
- Taxes & fees (8%)
- $8.40
- Total
- $113.40
4Check it against a real bill
Enter the kWh from your latest statement. The gap is the load you haven't listed — which is usually the most interesting number on this page.
What's costing you the most
Costed at your all-in effective rate, so these add up to the bill above rather than just its energy portion.
Keep a copy
Print this estimate to sit alongside your next statement, or build a fuller summary that adds your generator, battery and solar picks.
Why nameplate watts overstate your bill
A refrigerator's label says 700W. Multiply that by 24 hours and you get 16.8 kWh a day — about thirteen times what a real fridge uses. The label is a nameplate rating: what the compressor draws while it's actually running, with headroom. That compressor only runs 33-40% of the time, and draws well under the rated figure while it does.
So this page uses average-draw figures for anything that cycles — refrigeration, air conditioning, furnace blowers, thermostatic heating — while the generator and battery calculators keep using the nameplate figures, because sizing backup power is the one job where you genuinely do need the worst case. Same appliance, two different questions, two different numbers — the same reason startup surge is a third number again.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my estimated bill lower than my actual bill?
Almost always because of load you haven't listed. Space heating and cooling, an electric water heater, and standby draw from everything left plugged in are the usual culprits — standby alone runs 5-10% of a typical household's electricity. Enter your real kWh in the reality check and the calculator will tell you how much is unaccounted for.
Why doesn't my supply rate match what I actually pay per kWh?
Because the supply rate is only part of the bill. Most utilities bill delivery separately at a similar per-kWh amount, add a fixed monthly service charge regardless of usage, then apply taxes and fees on top. The effective rate — total divided by kWh — is usually well above the supply rate people quote, and it's the figure to use when working out what an appliance costs to run.
What are tiered or inclining block rates?
Some utilities, common in California and Arizona, price the first block of kWh cheaply and step the rate up as usage rises, so a heavy month costs disproportionately more. If your bill shows more than one per-kWh generation rate, you're on a tiered plan. Turn on tiered rates in the calculator and enter your own blocks.
How accurate is an appliance-by-appliance estimate?
It's good at telling you which appliances dominate your bill and what a change would save, and only fair at predicting a total, because real usage moves with weather, occupancy and equipment age. This calculator uses average-draw figures per appliance class rather than nameplate ratings — a refrigerator rated 700W actually averages nearer 50W once compressor cycling is accounted for — which avoids the single biggest error in most DIY estimates.
Does running fewer hours actually lower the bill much?
It depends entirely on which appliance. Cutting an hour off a 50W television is worth pennies a month; cutting an hour off electric heating, an electric water heater, or air conditioning is worth real money. The ranked list on this page exists to show you which of your appliances is which before you change anything.
Average-draw figures are derived from published ENERGY STAR and EIA consumption data for each appliance class, and the EnergyReckoncatalog documents where a figure is a measurement and where it's an estimate.