How much does it cost to boil a kettle?

EVERYONE loves a cuppa – but do you know how much it adds to your energy bill.

We take a look at how expensive it is to pop the kettle on, and how much a daily brew could be adding to your bills each year.

Fancy coffee gadgets consume a lot of energy too, with the top-end appliances using a third more energy than using a bog standard kettle.

Brits are said to drink almost 36billion cups of tea per year, so that’s a lot of power surges to heat up the nation’s favourite drink.

Millions of households face paying £129 more for energy bills from October after Liz Truss announced a freeze on the price of energy.

The new Energy Price Guarantee means a typical family will not pay more than £2,500 a year on bills.

However the cap only limits the amount that firms can charge customers, households could still pay more than this amount depending on their energy usage.

So it’s more important than ever to be aware of how much energy you’re using.

We’ve broken down everything you need to know about how much it’s going to cost you to boil a kettle over the year. Check it out below.

Energy usage

A standard kettle uses about 3kW of power and making a single cup of tea cost less than a penny to boil according to .

So to work out how much it will cost to make your favourite hot beverages you need to do a bit of maths.

The equation is: cost = power (kilowatt) x cost of one kWh (pence) x the length of time (months or over a year.)

Under the current energy price cap it costs £0.28 to use one kWh of electricity.

To calculate what it costs to boil a single cup you’ll need to multiply the amount of energy used by the unit rate of electricity.

According to Uswitch it currently costs costs 7p to boil a kettle for five minutes at a time.

And if you were to boil your kettle for five minutes everyday of the year – it’ll add £25.48 to your energy bills.

From October it’ll cost 9p to run your kettle for five minutes and if you were to do so everyday for a year, it will set you back £32.76.

Coffee machines are even more expensive and switching to using a kettle for tea could be cheaper.

If the 16.75 million coffee machine owners in the UK switch from drinking four cups of tea a day to four cups of coffee, they will go from spending £171 million to spending £228.9 million.

Total cost

In total Britain spends £1billion a year boiling kettles for tea according to Uswitch.

Kettles account for 6% of total household expenditures according to Statista as well, which can add up to a cost of £19.3billion across the UK.

And £68 million a year is estimated to be wasted annually by consumers over-filling their kettles.

There are ways to reduce the overall costs though.

Cut the cost of your cuppas

One of the biggest elements that will hike up your energy costs is filling up the kettle with too much water to begin with.

If you’re only after one quite caffeine fix but you fill the kettle up with enough water for eight cups, it’s not only going to take a really long time to brew, but you’ll be wasting energy heating the excess water.

Ben Gallizzi, energy expert at , said: “When making a cup of tea, only fill your kettle with as much water as you need for the number of drinks you are making.

“The more water is in the kettle, the longer it will take to get to the right temperature and the more power it will be using.”

Turning off machines when they’re not being used is a good way to crack down on unnecessary costs too.

Make sure you flip off the switch on the wall and unplug the appliance as leaving it on standby will continue to drain your bank account in the same way it drains the unneeded power from the wall.

Another home comfort you might want to be wary of is the overnight fan you’re leaving on during the hot summer nights.

Leaving it running can also hike your energy bill, so being aware of the cost breakdown is important.

Anybody wanting to splash out on a hot tub before the summer comes to a close, should keep in mind the costs of running it too.