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How do I Calculate Icemaker Power Usage?

Elizabeth Knoll

Ice makers are your best friend on a hot summer day --- nothing is better than an ice-cold beverage when it is blazing hot outside. Making ice can be done a few different ways: make it the old fashioned way with ice cube trays or use an ice maker to automatically make ready-to-use cubes. If you opt for the ice maker, you may want to know how much power it consumes so you can plan for its operational cost. A little math is needed here to make the required calculations.

  1. Locate the service tag on the ice maker. Look for the "Watts" listing on this tag.

  2. Convert watts to kilowatts by dividing by 1,000. For example if your ice maker is 500 watts, it will consume 0.5 kilowatts every hour that it is operational.

  3. Find out the charge for electricity in your area. This will be listed as charge per kilowatt hour on your energy bill.

  4. Estimate how many hours your ice maker runs per day. If you use a lot of ice, it will run significantly more than if you don't use much ice at all. Multiply this number by the kilowatt per hour number you calculated in Step 2.

  5. Calculate the approximate power usage of your ice maker. Multiply the final result of Step 4 with the energy cost from Step 3. For example, if your ice maker consumes 0.5 kilowatts per hour and operates for 6 hours a day, it uses 3 kilowatts per day. If your energy cost is 10 cents per kilowatt hour, it costs 30 cents per day to operate your ice maker.