Cost to run a box fan in Virginia (August 2026 rates)
At 17.64¢ per kilowatt-hour — Virginia's average residential price in August 2026 — running a box fan costs $19.84 a year. That is 3% less than the national average of $20.43. Virginia's residential rate is up 11.3% from August 2025, which moves this appliance from $17.83 to $19.84 a year.
- Per hour
- 1.3¢
- Per day of use
- 13.2¢
- Per month
- $1.65
- Per year
- $19.84
Assumption: 75 W, 10 hours a day, 150 days a year — 112 kWh a year. 20-inch box fan on high. Low speed roughly halves the draw. Use the calculator to swap in the numbers from your own model.
How Virginia compares
Virginia pays 17.64¢/kWh, the 20th most expensive residential electricity of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions EIA reports. For this appliance that works out to 58.5¢ less a year than the typical U.S. household pays for the same use. Running the same box fan costs $14.31 a year in Nevada and $53.08 in Hawaii, so where you live changes this bill by $38.77 a year.
| State | Rate | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado | 17.17¢ | $1.61 | $19.32 |
| Minnesota | 17.20¢ | $1.61 | $19.35 |
| Virginia | 17.64¢ | $1.65 | $19.84 |
| Delaware | 18.70¢ | $1.75 | $21.04 |
| Illinois | 19.32¢ | $1.81 | $21.73 |
States ranked by average residential price, cheapest first. See all 51 states for a box fan.
What else costs about the same in Virginia
Cutting the number down
- Pointing one out of an upstairs window at night pulls cool air through the whole house for a fraction of what cooling it costs.
- Box fans are cheap to run but not free: continuous summer use adds up to real kilowatt-hours.
Questions
- How much does a box fan cost per month in Virginia?
- About $1.65 a month, assuming 75 W, 10 hours a day, 150 days a year at 17.64¢/kWh.
- How many kilowatt-hours does a box fan use?
- Roughly 112 kWh a year under these assumptions, or 0.07 kWh for every hour it runs.
- Is that expensive compared with other states?
- Virginia has the 20th most expensive average residential rate in the country, so this appliance costs less here than the U.S. average of $20.43 a year.