Cost to run a box fan in Wisconsin (August 2026 rates)
At 19.41¢ per kilowatt-hour — Wisconsin's average residential price in August 2026 — running a box fan costs $21.84 a year. That is 7% more than the national average of $20.43. Wisconsin's residential rate is up 5.3% from August 2025, which moves this appliance from $20.75 to $21.84 a year.
- Per hour
- 1.5¢
- Per day of use
- 14.6¢
- Per month
- $1.82
- Per year
- $21.84
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 Wisconsin compares
Wisconsin pays 19.41¢/kWh, the 16th most expensive residential electricity of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions EIA reports. For this appliance that works out to $1.41 more 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 19.32¢ | $1.81 | $21.73 |
| Ohio | 19.38¢ | $1.82 | $21.80 |
| Wisconsin | 19.41¢ | $1.82 | $21.84 |
| Maryland | 21.40¢ | $2.01 | $24.07 |
| Pennsylvania | 21.77¢ | $2.04 | $24.49 |
States ranked by average residential price, cheapest first. See all 51 states for a box fan.
What else costs about the same in Wisconsin
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 Wisconsin?
- About $1.82 a month, assuming 75 W, 10 hours a day, 150 days a year at 19.41¢/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?
- Wisconsin has the 16th most expensive average residential rate in the country, so this appliance costs more here than the U.S. average of $20.43 a year.