How Many kWh Does It Take To Run a House?

By Cormac Breen

Content Manager

The average household electricity consumption in Ireland is approximately 4,200 kWh per year. This figure can vary depending on several factors, including the size of the house, the number of occupants, and the types of appliances used. Running a home can be expensive, and often electricity bills make up the majority of our annual household costs. Let’s have a look at what influences this, and what you can do to reduce your consumption and in turn, your bills.

What Is The Average Electricity Usage in Ireland?

The Commission for Regulation and Utilities (CRU) states that the average household electricity consumption in Ireland is 4,200 kWh per year.

The idea is to give consumers a figure they can use to calculate the average annual cost of electricity based on the unit price charged by their electricity supplier.

For example, if we take Electric Ireland’s current Urban 24hr tariff at a unit price of 27.23c per kWh (including VAT), we can calculate how much a year worth of electricity would cost.

By simply multiplying 4,200 kWh by 27.23c, we can estimate a cost of €1,143 per year.

This is very useful when comparing suppliers and their prices, as the simple formula can quickly give you an estimate. Given that energy bills take up a large portion of our yearly income, it’s important to know if we are overpaying for them.

What’s The Average kWh Usage Per Day?

If we take the yearly average of 4,200 kWh, we can estimate that the daily average electricity consumption for a household in Ireland is around 11.5 kWh per day.

However, not all homes consume the same amount of electricity, and therefore we need to consider how average electricity consumption changes depending on:

• The type of home we live in.
• The number of occupants.
• If someone is working from home.
• Where you live in the country.
• The efficiency of appliances and heating systems.
• How old the home is.

How Many kWh to Run a House?

The size of the home we live in is perhaps the most important factor to consider when estimating how many kWh of electricity we will use in a year. Bigger homes mean more people, and more people equal more electricity use.

Below, you will find a table that breaks down how the size of our home can increase or decrease your yearly electricity costs compared to the average home.

Prices are based on Electric Ireland’s Urban 24hr tariff of 34.75c including VAT.

What we can see is that the size of your home can have quite a significant impact on your yearly electricity use, but how exactly does this work?

Number of Occupants

It’s a no-brainer that more people living in a home means more electricity will be used, but it’s also the case of how much time people spend at home. 

A single professional for example living in a one or two-bed flat will spend less time at home during the day and will also use large domestic appliances such as washing machines less frequently meaning over the year, they consume less than the average.

On the other side, a family of 4 or more will consume above the average given that most likely there is someone at home all day, four times as many personal devices being used and also much more frequent use of expensive appliances such as dishwashers and tumble dryers.

Working From Home

With more people working from home in recent years, it’s going to have an impact on our annual electricity consumption. While appliances like laptops use relatively little energy, more time at home means, especially in winter, more heating, more lighting, more use of kitchen appliances etc which can add up over the year.

Read our working from home guide to save on your electricity bills.

Where You Live in The Country

Given Ireland’s sparsely populated rural areas, it can be the case that people living in these areas will consume more electricity per year than those living in urban areas for reasons such as:

1. The need for outdoor security lighting due to the lack of street lighting.
2. More exposure to wind and rain, especially in the west of Ireland, may require more heating during the year.
3. Rural homes tend to be larger than urban homes, requiring more electricity to run.
4. Larger gardens, property etc will require more upkeep and the use of more electrical garden tools etc.

Efficiency of Appliances

Older, less efficient home appliances will consume more electricity compared to their modern, energy efficient versions. In the case of home devices such as televisions, laptops, mobile phones etc, most of them tend to be quite modern and therefore not a huge drain on electricity.

However, large domestic appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, tumble dryers etc are much more expensive to run and the less efficient they are, the more they cost.

We don’t tend to change these appliances very often due to their cost, so it’s often the case that we have the same appliance for 10 or 15 years, meaning that a lot of them are outdated in terms of their energy efficiency.

Source: Purchase.ie
Prices based on Electric Ireland unit rate 27.23c per kWh on a Urban 24 hour meter with VAT included and 8% discount applied.
Last Updated: April 2024

Read About Which Home Appliances Use The Most Electricity

Heating

Homes that rely on electricity for their heating and hot water will often consume far more kWh per year than homes that use gas.

Space heaters, electric showers, storage heaters place large demands on home electricity and given Ireland’s climate, a significant portion of the year is spent heating our homes.

For example, 5 minutes use of a typical electric shower can use almost 1 kWh of electricity.

If there are 4 people in a home having, on average, 1 shower per day, that could mean almost 4 kWh per day costing roughly €1 or, €365 per year.

How Do I Reduce My Electricity Consumption?

If you feel you are spending too much on electricity or overconsuming throughout the year, there are some practical ways you can reduce your electricity consumption and save money on your home utility bills.

Smart Meters

Smart meters are a great way to track your electricity consumption and give you insight into whether you reach the annual average of kWh for an Irish home. They will allow you to see how your consumption is affected by the factors listed previously in the article and make the necessary changes to your electricity consumption habits.

Retrofitting

While some homes may not have the budget for retrofitting, those that can will see significant reductions in their annual electricity consumption. By upgrading your home insulation, heating systems, windows etc, this will reduce your home heating needs and in turn, make your home much more energy efficient.

There are SEAI grants available for people looking to upgrade their homes and while it won’t make it very cheap, it will help those who are within the budget of making these types of improvements.

Microgeneration

Again, another expensive option but one that offers long term reduction in energy consumption. By far the most popular form of microgeneration in Ireland is solar panels, whereby installing them on your roof can offset your dependency on the national grid. 

In some cases, thanks to The Micro-Generation Support Scheme, homeowners who produce excess energy from solar panels can sell their excess electricity back to their provider, further reducing their annual electricity costs.

Our dedicated article to microgeneration in Ireland contains lots of interesting information about solar panels and the grants available for their instillation.

Invest in Energy Efficient Appliances

While retrofitting and microgeneration are for a lot of people impractical or simply too expensive, a more economical approach would be to invest in highly efficient home appliances:

1. Switch lightbulbs to LED bulbs, which use much less energy and last much longer as a result.
2. Try and buy home appliances with an A-rating for energy efficiency. This is important in particular for large domestic appliances that cost more to run than smaller technological devices such as televisions and laptops.
3. Invest in cheaper cooking equipment such as air fryers, as they use much less energy than traditional ovens.

Develop Energy Saving Habits

Ultimately, it’s down to the individual to change their own energy consumption habits if they want to reduce their annual energy bills. Small changes go a long way and while expensive solutions exist, we can also simply:

1. Unplug devices that we are not using, including charging cables whose passive energy consumption can add up to almost 10% of our annual energy usage.
2. Be clever about how you heat your house. Turn off radiators in rooms you don’t use, and remember to close doors so as not to lose the heat from a room.
3. If you are on a day/night tariff where your unit rate for electricity is cheaper at night, programme expensive appliances like dishwashers and washing machine to come on at night.
4. Turn off lights when you leave rooms and try to only light the space you are in using lamps etc rather than the entire room.
5. Turn off cookers and ovens a few minutes before your food has cooked and use the residual heat to finish cooking them.

101 Ways to Reduce Your Electricity Bills