What every appliance costs to run in a NZ home (2026)

Most advice about saving power is aimed at the wrong end of this list. The genuinely expensive things in a New Zealand home are heating, hot water, and whatever you have out the back that runs a pump - and almost everything in the kitchen costs less per year than one month of running a plug-in heater.

Figures below are priced at 36.3c/kWh, the national average variable rate. That is deliberate and it is explained further down, because it is not the number printed at the top of your bill. The two rows marked night are the exception: hot water is usually on a controlled circuit that runs overnight, so those are billed at the cheaper night rate instead.

All 45, ranked

Each row assumes typical NZ usage for that appliance class, and the annual figure is twelve times the monthly one. Rows marked night are billed at the night rate (21.8c/kWh) rather than 36.3c, because hot water normally runs on a controlled overnight circuit. For heating and cooling that monthly figure is an average across the whole year, not what you would see on a July bill - a heater that averages $106 a month is costing far more than that in winter and almost nothing in February. The calculator models the month-by-month shape properly.

The rate we used, and why it is not the one on your bill

Your power bill has two parts: a daily fixed charge for having a connection at all, and a variable charge for each unit you use. MBIE's published regional figure blends the two - it takes a household's whole annual bill and divides by units consumed.

That blended figure is the right tool for comparing one region against another. It is the wrong tool for costing an appliance, because your daily charge does not change when you switch something on. Charging a share of it to the toaster inflates the toaster. Across the board the distortion is around a sixth - enough to make a table like this misleading.

So every figure here uses the marginal rate: what one additional kWh actually costs. If you want your own number, take the c/kWh line off your invoice - the one next to the units, not any annual summary - and put it into the calculator.

Where the money actually goes

Two categories dominate a New Zealand power bill, and neither is the one people go looking for first.

Space heating is roughly 30% of annual household energy use. New Zealand housing stock is poorly insulated by the standards of comparably cold countries, and we heat intermittently rather than continuously, which means we spend a lot re-heating rooms that have gone cold. The gap between heating methods is enormous: the plug-in oil column heater in the table above costs several times what a heat pump costs to deliver the same warmth, because a resistive heater can only ever turn one unit of electricity into one unit of heat, while a heat pump moves three or more. If one line on your bill is worth attacking, it is this one.

Hot water is another 25-30%. An electric cylinder is a large, constant load that most people never think about because there is no switch to notice. Cylinder wraps, a sensible thermostat setting and - where the plan supports it - moving the cylinder onto a night rate all bite into it without changing how anyone lives.

Everything else - the entire kitchen, all the lighting, every screen and console in the house - shares what is left. That is worth knowing before spending a weekend switching things off at the wall.

The costs that surprise people

• The heated towel rail. An 80W element sounds trivial and it is trivial - for an hour. Left on around the clock, as most are, it runs to about $254 a year. A $20 timer is the highest-return purchase on this entire page.
• The second fridge. The old fridge moved to the garage to hold drinks costs about the same as the towel rail, and is often running near-empty in an unheated space that makes it work harder.
• Halogen downlights. A house still on halogens is burning roughly four times what the same lighting costs in LED, and unlike most efficiency upgrades this one is cheap and immediate.
• Pool and spa equipment. Anything that heats or circulates water outdoors sits at the very top of this table. If you own one, it is almost certainly your largest single load - larger than your heating.

And in the other direction: 16 of the 45 appliances here cost under $50 a year to run. The kettle, the microwave, the toaster, the laptop, the router. These are the things people are told to worry about, and collectively they are a rounding error next to one badly-chosen heater.

Work out your own figures

A table of typical households is a starting point, not an answer. The calculator takes the same model and lets you set your own region, your own rate, your own wattages and your own hours - then shows which of your appliances are actually driving the bill, rather than which ones are famous for it.

For the two categories that matter most, we have longer guides on what a heat pump really costs to run, hot water heat pumps versus cylinders, and the most expensive appliances in NZ homes.