# How many KWH does an average home use in a month

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 29, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319 "2005-01-29T20:02:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319/1 "2005-01-29T20:02:52Z")

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During the icestorm here a month ago I went and got a generator for my parents. it was a 5000 watt generator and it was enough to run the water, the refrigerator, some of the lights and the tv/vcr/dvd/satellite w/o problem. However it couldn’t run the water heater since that is 6000 watts.

Since a KWH is about 6 cents here and the electric bill is about $150 is it safe to assume an average house (or at least the ones here) use 2500 KWH a month?

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319/2 "2005-01-29T20:07:17Z")

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I put this in IMHO because its a poll of sorts in case anyone wonders why its not in GQ.

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**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319/3 "2005-01-29T20:18:28Z")

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In 2004, I used an average of 1670kwh at 8.5¢/kwh.

The low point was in March (1070) and the peak in July (2559).

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**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319/4 "2005-01-29T20:20:33Z")

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I think the typical house consumes about 1000 kwh each month.

I work for a very large consumer of electricity ~450 MW and I have often heard that each MW is enough electricity for 1000 homes.

Therefore, my employer uses enough electricity to power 450,000 homes.

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**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-kwh-does-an-average-home-use-in-a-month/287319/5 "2005-01-29T20:25:19Z")

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Rather than guess at it people could look to the EIA, which has exactly this sort of information.

[http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/byfuels/2001/byfuel\_el.pdf](http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/byfuels/2001/byfuel_el.pdf)

Numbers are whole-year 2001. Look to the line that says “kWh per household” and divide by 12.