Cost to run a box fan in Washington (August 2026 rates)
At 14.63¢ per kilowatt-hour — Washington's average residential price in August 2026 — running a box fan costs $16.46 a year. That is 19% less than the national average of $20.43. Washington's residential rate is up 7.2% from August 2025, which moves this appliance from $15.36 to $16.46 a year.
- Per hour
- 1.1¢
- Per day of use
- 11.0¢
- Per month
- $1.37
- Per year
- $16.46
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 Washington compares
Washington pays 14.63¢/kWh, the 12th cheapest residential electricity of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions EIA reports. For this appliance that works out to $3.97 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mississippi | 14.43¢ | $1.35 | $16.23 |
| Wyoming | 14.43¢ | $1.35 | $16.23 |
| Washington | 14.63¢ | $1.37 | $16.46 |
| Oklahoma | 14.82¢ | $1.39 | $16.67 |
| North Carolina | 14.95¢ | $1.40 | $16.82 |
States ranked by average residential price, cheapest first. See all 51 states for a box fan.
What else costs about the same in Washington
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 Washington?
- About $1.37 a month, assuming 75 W, 10 hours a day, 150 days a year at 14.63¢/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?
- Washington has the 12th cheapest average residential rate in the country, so this appliance costs less here than the U.S. average of $20.43 a year.