Rebates for buying energy-efficient appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners are available from both the government as well as manufacturers.
Tax Credits are available for installing things like high-efficiency water heaters, air conditioners, heaters, roofing, insulation, doors & windows, solar panels, etc.
Most "awards" I get are useless because they're from tiny sites that nobody's heard of, and the award-giver is just fishing for a way to get free advertising for their own site. But one morning I woke up and found that Kim Komando had sent more traffic to my Laundry Costs Calculator than Google had sent to my entire website! So I'm happy to publicly thank her for the traffic here. Thanks, Kim!
If you like this site, you might also like
some of my other
sites:
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Electric vs.
Gas Dryers
Calculate
your Cost Per Load
Electric
Gas
Loads per week
loads per week
Energy rate
/therm
Time per load
Cost per load
Cost per year
[an error occurred while processing this directive] Google picks the ads, not
me. I don't endorse the advertisers.
The above
are SAMPLE costs! Your
own cost will be different depending on your local rate
for
electricity and gas. (It will also depend on how well your washer
extracts water from your
clothes, how long you run your dryer, and what model of dryer you
use, but choosing the correct fuel rates will get you close
enough.) See more on the cost of
electricity, and how to misquote this site.
And see the deluxe laundry calculator to
figure the cost of both the washer and the dryer.
Assumptions: 45
minutes per load, Electric model uses 3.3 kwh, Gas model uses 0.22
therm + 0.21 kWh. Gas model asumes rate in the Electric column to
spin the drum. See sources.
Clothes dryer energy use
A clothes dryer accounts for a whopping 12% of
electricity use in a typical household. (source) And clothes drying is one of the easiest
places to save energy, because you can erase 100% of the cost
by simply hanging your clothes up to dry. At a sample rate of
$0.15/kWh and 7.5 loads per week, we're talking a savings of $196
per year by line-drying instead of using an electric dryer.
That's hefty.
How to save energy and cut your costs
If you're determined to use a dryer, there are still
other ways to cut your energy use. Let's go over them
now. But let's start with the most effective: not using a dryer
at all.
(1) Don't use a dryer in the first place
Dryers simply aren't necessary.
You can easily
hang your clothes up to dry instead. The Japanese are way ahead
of us on that one -- they use most of the modern conveniences we do,
but clothes dryers aren't among them. Even in the luxury
apartments, you'll see the residents hanging their laundry out on their
balconies. I asked my Japanese friend what they do when it rains
for a solid week, and she said, "We just hang the laundry up inside."
Fortunately, this idea is getting more popular even in the U.S.
Fewer people believe that clothes dryers are a necessity
vs. a few years ago. (Pew Research,
2009) Drying outside (vs. inside) is better if possible,
since clothes dry faster and the sun has a sanitizing effect.
Tip the
Planet has an excellent article about air-drying clothes,
covering every possible angle, including clever things like retractable
clothes lines.
(2) Get a gas dryer, IF
gas is cheaper than
electricity in your area, and IF you already have gas service
If you don't already have gas service, it's
usually not worth getting it just to run a gas dryer vs. electric,
unless you gas is way cheaper than electricity in your area,
and/or you have a very
large household. That's because you'll likely pay around $10/mo.
just for the privilege of being a customer of the gas company.
If you already have gas service, your next step is to see if going with
gas would actually net you any real savings. Gas is often cheaper
than electricity, but not always. You can find your cost for gas
and electricity (from your utility bills), enter them into the
calculator above, and then see how much it costs to run an electric
dryer vs.
a gas dryer. And to really see how much your laundry is
costing you, see my deluxe laundry calculator,
which includes the cost of both the washer and the dryer.
Whether or not you save any money by going with gas, it will save some energy,
if conservation is your goal. (Though if conservation is really
your goal, you're probably line-drying your clothes anyway.)
Power plants are only about 37-44% efficient
at turning coal into electricity, so it's more efficient to use the
fossil fuel directly rather than inefficiently converting it into
electricity first. (Gas dryers themselves are a little less
efficient than electric dryers, but the penalty for getting the
electricity from coal in the first place is far higher.)
(3) When replacing a
dryer, get one with a moisture sensor
A moisture sensor shuts off the dryer
automatically when your clothes are dry. So you'll never
run the dryer longer than you have to. Moisture sensors cut
energy use by about 15%. (Ca. Energy Com.)
Make sure to clean the sensor
occasionally, too, so that the waxy buildup from dryer softening sheets
doesn't impede its ability to sense moisture. A temperuter sensor
is almost as good as a moisture sensor, and will cut energy use by 10%.
(4)
Get a front-load
washer
Front-loading washers tend to leave about 7%
less water in
your clothes than top-load washers, which means 7% less drying time. (source) (Front-leaders use a lot less
water,
too.)
(5) Use a spin
dryer
A spin
dryer
is a little machine that spins your clothes around really fast to
remove excess water (and detergents bonded to the water). After a
couple of minutes in the spin dryer, you put your clothes in a regular
clothes dryer, where they dry 30 minutes faster than usual.
Sample savings are $113/yr. for electric and $67 for
gas. (Based
on 7.5 loads a week, 0:20 drying time instead of 0:50, 15¢/kWh &
1.23/therm, and $3 to run the spin dryer: 1 washer load = 3 spin dryer
loads (Amazon), 3 mins./load, so 9 mins total, at 300 watts.)
(6) Tips on using your dryer
Clean
the lint
filter after EVERY load. Your dryer takes longer to
dry when
it's trying to push air through lint. A dirty lint screen can
mean 30% more energy use. (CA Energy Com.)
If you use fabric
softener sheets, clean your lint screen with a toothbrush and water
occasionally. Dryer sheets can cause an invisibly waxy
buildup on the lint screen which makes it harder for the dryer to push
air through it. (Snopes).
Wash & Dry very
early in the morning, or at night. If your utility imposes a
demand charge,
then do your laundry in off-peak hours.
Feed your dryer warm air.
The colder the incoming air, the more energy your dryer will have to
use to heat it up. A cold basement is the worst place for a
dryer. The warmer the place you can put the dryer, the
better. (But of course, don't heat the area the dryer is in just
to feed the dryer warmer air. That will use way more
energy than having the dryer in a cold area.)
Add a wet towel to
remove wrinkles. According to one website (no longer
around),
if you leave your clothes in the dryer too long and they become
wrinkled, you can easily cure this by throwing a wet towel in the dryer
and drying again. This saves you from having to either iron all your
clothes, or wash them and dry them all over again.
(7) Run around the house naked
Then you'll have less clothes to wash. (But
not if
it's so cold that you'd compensate by turning up the heat, which would
more than negate your savings. On the other hand, if it's summer and
this lets you run the AC less, then you'll save even more.)
Below are questions I've
received and answered about how saving on the use of
clothes dryers.
Ask
Mr. Electricity about saving on dryer costs
Our dryer just quit working
today. My husband says if he puts up a clothesline and irons the
clothes to remove the wrinkles that it will be much cheaper than using
the dryer. Is this true? I know line drying is cheaper, but what about
running an iron? I have been researching this all day on the net and
could not find anything even remotely close until i found your site.
Very informative, glad it is there. --
Wendy MacQueen, May 2003
You can estimate the difference yourself like
this:
(Dryer wattage) x (Time used) = (Total Dryer
Energy)
(Iron wattage) x (Time used) = (Total Iron Energy)
You can find the wattage of each appliance by looking
at the label, but this is not so effective for dryers since the rating
on the label is the maximum the dryer will ever use, and it typically
uses a bit less than that. To find the electrical consumption of your
dryer more accurately, see the table above that I just added.
Anyway, when you do the calculations you'll find that
using the iron is cheaper. The iron uses less electricity than the
dryer, and you probably won't run it for nearly as long as you'd run
the dryer.
There's another factor to consider: You're also saving
the cost of a new dryer if you don't replace it. So using a clothesline
and an iron instead of replacing and using a new dryer will definitely
save you
money.
Everyone says to run appliances
like washing machines and dishwashers at night to save money. Is
electricity cheaper at night?--
Melissa, Appomattox, VA,
Mar. 2003
Not usually, but it depends on how your utility
company charges you for power. Some utilities charge less for
evening use, and you can check your electric bill or call your utility
company to find out for sure. It could also pay to run appliances in
the evening when the air conditioning is off if your utility company
has a demand charge. See the next answer.
Does it raise your electric
bill to run two appliances at the same time rather than one after the
other? Like, say, the washer and the dryer or the oven and the dryer?
We have an all electric house and were trying to save money on our
electric bill. --Christie, Jan. 2003
It depends on whether your utility company has
a separate demand charge in addition to the consumption charge.
The demand charge based on the maximum amount of electricity you draw
at any one time. The chart at right from Wisconsin Electric illustrates the concept. The
shaded area is how much electricity you used, and you know you get
charged for that. But the black bar on top is the demand, how much
energy you "demanded" at any given point throughout the day. If your
utility company has a demand charge (ask them), then you can save money
by spreading out your electrical use throughout the day. Running
appliances one after the other rather than at the same time would
reduce your demand. And better yet, running them when you're not using
much electricity for other purposes (such as at night when the air
conditioner is off) will reduce your demand even more.
