Electric kettle Electricity Cost & Wattage
What an electric kettle costs to run: typical 2200 W, about $27 a year. Adjust the figures to your own usage and electricity price.
Your Electric kettle running cost
Costs about
/ month
- Per day
- Per year
- Energy per day
Change the hours and price to match your case.
Typical wattage
| Low | 2000 W |
|---|---|
| Typical | 2200 W |
| High | 3000 W |
| Typical use | 0.2 h/day |
An electric kettle is one of the highest-power appliances in most kitchens, usually 2,000 to 3,000 watts, but it runs for only a minute or two at a time, so each boil is cheap even though the power is high. What drives the cost is how much water you heat and how often. Boiling a full kettle when you only need one mug wastes most of the energy, because you are heating water you will not use. This page uses a small daily-hours average; adjust it to how much you actually boil.
Kettles are close to fully efficient — almost all the electricity becomes heat in the water — so there is little to gain from a different model. The savings come entirely from habit: heat only the water you need, and do not re-boil water that is already hot. Descaling matters too, because a thick layer of limescale on the element makes it work harder and take longer to reach the boil, quietly raising every cup's cost.
It is worth putting the numbers in perspective. A single boil is cheap — a few cents at most — so the kettle will never dominate a bill the way a heater or an oven can. What makes it worth attention is frequency: a household that boils the kettle a dozen times a day, most of them over-filled, wastes far more water-heating energy over a year than the same household boiling only what it drinks. The calculator above lets you compare those two habits directly.
How to cut electric kettle running costs
- Fill it with only the water you need — mark one mug, two mugs, and stop there.
- Do not re-boil water that is still hot; it just heats it again from scratch.
- Descale regularly so the element heats efficiently and reaches the boil faster.
- Use the kettle rather than a pot on the hob to boil water — it is faster and cheaper.
- Boil for tea and coffee only to the volume you will actually drink.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to boil a kettle?
Boiling a full 1.5-litre kettle uses about 0.1 kWh, roughly 2 cents at $0.17/kWh. Boiling just one mug's worth costs a fraction of that — which is why filling only what you need matters.
Are some kettles more energy efficient than others?
Barely. Nearly all the energy becomes heat in the water regardless of model. The real difference is how much water you boil and whether the element is furred with limescale.
Does limescale increase running cost?
Yes. A thick scale layer insulates the element, so it takes longer to boil and uses more energy each time. Regular descaling keeps every cup as cheap as it should be.