How much do electrical items cost to run?

The table below provides an indication of the approximate costs of running individual items of IT equipment which will help to obtain co-operation from everyone. The figures are for running costs of each item while the school is open, which is on average 2,000 hours a year, 200 days for 10 hours a day.

Remember to multiply the number of items by the cost of each item to obtain annual overall running costs.

To calculate how much it costs to run an electrical item:

Power rating of item in Watts /1,000 to convert to kWh x hours of use x cost per kWh/100 = cost in £.

The chart at the bottom of the page gives an example of this calculation which you can follow.

In standby mode the energy use would be much lower but by turning off all PC’s when not in use overnight, at weekends and in the holidays would save a considerable amount of energy and cost as well as reducing the risk of fire.

Monitors use approximately a third of the energy used by a computer so by turning them off when leaving desks during the day can save a considerable amount of energy. You will not lose your work as the computer is still operating.

Follow this example to work out the running costs of all electrical equipment in your school / site.