Bar length is what each appliance costs; the hollow end of a bar is standby — power drawn while it sits plugged in and unused. The line running down the chart is the cumulative share, so you can see how few things you would actually have to change.
A watt is a rate; a kilowatt-hour is an amount (1,000 W for an hour). Your bill is priced in kWh, so time matters as much as power.
Ovens, heaters, dryers and air conditioning draw hundreds to thousands of watts; electronics single or low double digits. Ten to thirty times.
Regulations cap most standby draw at 0.5–1 W, but 8,700 hours a year of it, times every charger and TV, is a real line on a bill.
A high rate with modest use can cost less than a low rate with heavy use. The country comparison reprices your actual appliance list.
A watt is a rate: how fast something uses energy right now. A kilowatt-hour is an amount: 1,000 watts sustained for one hour. Multiply watts × hours × days ÷ 7, scaled to a year, and both continuous and bursty appliances work the same way.
Anything that heats, cools, dries or spins hard draws hundreds to thousands of watts; anything electronic, single or low double digits. A little time on a heater or dryer outweighs a lot of time on a laptop or lamp.
Devices left on standby draw a few watts continuously. Ten idle devices at 2 W each is 175 kWh a year: a real line on a bill for electricity that did nothing at all. A device at 1 W costs about 8.8 kWh, a couple of dollars.
A high electricity rate with modest use can cost less than a low rate with heavy use. The price of electricity itself varies roughly 4–5× between the cheapest and most expensive major economies, driven by energy mix, import dependence, and tax and levy policy.
Typical, commonly cited nameplate or average-running figures for each appliance type: a starting point, not a measurement of your unit. Check the rating label or a plug-in energy meter, then edit the value.
Total kWh used times the selected country’s average grid carbon intensity: a rough figure reflecting the country’s mix (coal and gas grids high, hydro and nuclear low). It changes with the seasons and the seconds; an order-of-magnitude estimate.
Most contracts charge a fixed daily fee before a single kilowatt-hour: in the UK currently around 60p a day, payable if you switch everything off at the wall for twelve months. Against this page’s UK rate of 26.11p/kWh it is not a rounding error: the lighter your usage, the more this page understates your bill, by roughly a quarter for a typical home and over a third for a small flat. For a very low user a tariff with a lower standing charge saves more than any unplugging.
Energy £392, £705, £1,097 and £2,350 against a fixed £219.
Every figure assumes a single price per kWh all day, all year. Real tariffs are often time-of-use (cheap overnight, expensive at teatime) or tiered. On an EV or heat-pump tariff, the average rate is not the rate you pay for the thing that matters.
The presets are typical for a class. A fifteen-year-old fridge can use two to three times what a new one does; a heat-pump tumble dryer about half a vented one. Anything running round the clock is entered as an average wattage with its duty cycle folded in (a fridge is 55 W average, not the 150 W on its plate), so do not “correct” it. Not modelled at all: space heating and cooling, which for most homes dwarfs everything on this list.
Grid intensity is one number per country, but the real figure swings by a factor of three or more across a single day as wind and solar come and go. For anything you can time (an EV, a dishwasher, a washing machine) when you run it changes emissions far more than which appliance you chose.
Less than the internet usually claims, but not nothing. Modern regulations cap most appliances at around 0.5–1 W on standby, and anything left plugged in draws that for roughly 8,700 hours a year — so 1 W costs about 8.8 kWh annually, a couple of dollars. The catch is the count: ten idle devices at 2 W each is 175 kWh, which is a real line on a bill for electricity that did nothing at all. Enter a standby figure against any appliance in your list and the chart splits it out. Anything running 24/7 — a fridge, a router — has no idle hours, so it has no standby to add.
Typical, commonly-cited nameplate or average-running figures for each appliance type — a starting point, not a measurement of your unit. Check the rating label or a plug-in energy meter for the real number, then edit the value here.
It fits both kinds of appliance with one model: things that run continuously (a fridge — 24 hours, 7 days) and things used in short bursts (a dishwasher — 1 hour, 5 days a week). Multiply watts × hours × days ÷ 7, scaled to a year, and both work the same way.
Total kWh used × the selected country's average grid carbon intensity (kg CO₂ per kWh) — a rough figure that reflects the country's electricity mix (coal and gas grids run high, hydro and nuclear-heavy grids run low). It changes with the seasons and the seconds; treat it as an order-of-magnitude estimate.
Because the price of electricity itself varies enormously — roughly 4–5× between the cheapest and most expensive major economies, driven by energy mix, import dependence, and tax and levy policy. The "Compare countries" section shows exactly how much your specific list would cost elsewhere.
Releases in which this page changed, newest last. Derived from the archived copy of every release, not from notes written afterwards — so it reflects what actually shipped. Site-wide passes are left out; they are in the full changelog.