How Much Electricity Does a Dehumidifier Use?

Dehumidifiers are the load people forget. They sit in a basement, they run most of the day through summer, and unlike an air conditioner nobody hears them start and stop. A basement unit running twelve hours a day can quietly cost more over a season than the television, the computer and every light in the house combined.

Pint rating predicts wattage

Dehumidifiers are sold by pints of water removed per day, and the pint rating tracks wattage fairly closely. A 30-pint unit is around 300 to 400 W, a 50-pint around 500 to 600 W, a 70-pint around 700 to 800 W.

Buying small to save electricity usually backfires. An undersized unit runs constantly and never reaches the target humidity, so it uses more energy over a day than a larger unit that pulls the room down and then cycles. The efficiency figure to compare is the integrated energy factor, in litres per kWh, printed on the EnergyGuide label.

Runtime is set by the humidistat, not the machine

Runtime is the entire cost story here, and it is set by three things: how humid the space is, how well sealed it is, and where you set the humidistat.

Setting the target to 40 percent instead of 50 sounds cautious but often doubles the runtime, because the last ten points are the hardest to remove and the space keeps drifting back up. For mould control, 50 percent is sufficient. Below 45 you are spending real money for no additional benefit in most homes.

Compressor dehumidifiers also lose effectiveness below about 65 degrees Fahrenheit and can frost up, at which point the defrost cycle runs and you are paying for a machine that has stopped removing water. In a cold basement, a unit rated for low-temperature operation is not a luxury.

Dehumidifier cost across electricity rates

Dehumidifier running cost by state

Five things that cut the runtime

• Set the humidistat to 50 percent and leave it. The single biggest saving available on this appliance.
• Fix the water before you dry the air. A dehumidifier running against a leaking foundation, an unsealed crawlspace or a downspout discharging next to the wall is treating a symptom at 500 W. Grading, gutters and a vapour barrier are one-time costs.
• Use the continuous drain hose. A full bucket shuts the unit off, the humidity climbs back, and the next run has to remove it all again.
• Close basement windows in summer. Warm humid outside air condensing on cool basement surfaces is exactly the load you are paying to remove.
• Clean the coils and filter. Restricted airflow extends every cycle in the same way it does on an air conditioner.

How this compares to everything else you plug in

Per hour against the other things running in the background of a house.

Questions people actually ask

Related running costs

• How much electricity a window air conditioner uses — 900 W typical, about $0.17 an hour.
• How much electricity a ceiling fan uses — 60 W typical, about $0.01 an hour.

Running it on solar

A dehumidifier uses 6.00 kWh a day, which needs about 5 standard 400 W panels. Full array, battery and inverter sizing is on how many solar panels to run a dehumidifier.

Run the numbers on your own bill

• Electricity Cost Calculator
• Whole-Home Appliance Load Calculator

Costs on this page use a national average residential rate of 18.44¢ per kWh (August 2026, EIA-derived state residential averages). Your own rate is printed on your electricity bill and is the number that actually matters. Every figure here is recalculated from one central rate setting, so these tables move when the national average moves.