The six appliances that are the biggest drain on your energy bills – switch off or swap them to save £1,016 a year

HOUSEHOLDS could be wasting hundreds of pounds every year by relying on six major household appliances.

But many don’t realise which appliances are the biggest energy-guzzlers – even when it could help them save over £1,000 a year.

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Almost three-quarters (72%) of Brits do not know which electrical appliances use the most energy in their homes, according to EDF Energy.

Here are the six most costly appliances to run

• Oven
• Electric grill or hob
• Electric shower
• Washing machine
• Dishwasher
• TV

And a quarter (28%) remain unaware that their oven is the biggest household guzzler.

It costs the average household £47.12 a month or £565.44 a year to run their oven daily.

And families using an electric hob or grill for a similar amount of time can expect to pay £32.13 a month or £385.56 a year.

Households with an electric shower used for 12 minutes a day face costs of £18.36 a month or £220.32 a year.

EDF’s data suggests that it costs the average household roughly £14 a month or £171 a year to run a single cycle on their washing machine daily.

It also costs £8.63 a month or £103.56 a year to run a single dishwasher cycle every day.

TV’s have also got costly to run with four hours of watch time now costing £6.12 a month or £73.44 a year.

It comes after energy bills were capped at £2,500 a year for the average household last month.

But it was announced during the Autumn Budget that a new £3,000 cap will come into force for 24million people on standard variable tariffs after April.

But the exact amount you pay will depend on how much you use, as it’s the actual unit price that is capped.

So if you use more energy than the average household, expect to pay more than the £2,500 a year figure.

With this in mind, there are easy ways to cut energy costs – and it starts with your appliances.

How to cut appliance costs

Households can cut the costs of these six energy guzzlers by swapping them out or reducing their running time.

For example, if a household chose to swap their oven and hob to use an air fryer, microwave and toaster they’d slash their bills by £750 a year.

The average air fryer costs £16.80 to run if used for an hour every day of the month – substantially less than running a hob and oven at the same time.

Household with an electric shower can cut their costs in half from £18.36 a month to £9.18 a month if they halve the time spent showering.

The same goes for TV costs – if a household were to cut their viewing time from 4 hours a day to 2 hours they’d save over £3 a month.

Households taking cost-cutting to the next level can do so by swapping out their televisions for a tablet and streaming content instead.

Those looking to further slash their costs should think carefully before running their dishwasher and washing machines daily.

Households can save a considerable amount of money by using them once every three days instead of every day.

If you were to run three dishwasher cycles a week instead of one per day – you’d save £3.36 a month or £40.32 a year.

Households that run their washing machine every three days as opposed to seven will save £5.64 a month or £67.68 a year.

But if you do need to run a cycle every day you can cut costs further by setting your machine to a lower temperature.

Reducing your washing temperature to 30°C could save you £13 a year, while cutting further to 20°C could shave £24 off your annual bill. 

We’ve listed other ways to help slash your appliance running costs.

There are other tips to slash your electricity bills at home.

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk