How Much Does It Cost to Run a Ceiling Fan?

A ceiling fan is one of the cheapest things in a house to run. A typical 52 inch fan with a standard AC motor draws about 50 to 75 W on high and 15 to 30 W on low. Newer DC motor fans draw 5 to 35 W across their speed range, often half what an AC motor uses for the same airflow. A light kit adds whatever its bulbs use, about 10 to 20 W with LEDs. The default here is 60 W on high for 8 hours, 0.48 kWh, about 8 cents a day at the national average rate.

A ceiling fan does not cool the room. It moves air across your skin, which feels about 4 degrees cooler through evaporation and convection. That is why it only saves money when it lets you raise the air conditioner's setpoint, and why it does nothing useful in an empty room. The DOE estimates that a ceiling fan lets you raise the thermostat about 4 degrees with no loss of comfort, which on a central AC system can cut cooling energy by roughly 10 to 15 percent.

The motor itself also adds a little heat to the room, every watt it uses. A fan left spinning all day in a room no one is in costs about 25 cents a day on high and makes the AC work slightly harder. Turning it off on the way out of the room is the biggest saving.

In winter, reversing the fan to spin clockwise on low pushes warm air from the ceiling down the walls without a draft. In rooms with high or vaulted ceilings, it can make the room feel warmer at the same thermostat setting. The benefit is smaller in rooms with 8 foot ceilings.

Over a year at the default the fan uses about 175 kWh, roughly $30. Run on low, that falls to around $10. A ceiling fan is wired into the ceiling box, so a plug-in meter cannot read it. The wattage on the motor label or in the manual, multiplied by your hours, is accurate enough for a load this small.