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Microwave electricity cost per meal, day, month and year for solo, grill and convection modes, including standby drain.
This calculator turns a microwave's rated wattage into the rupees it adds to your bill per meal, per month and per year. The key correction it makes is that the figure on the door — 700 W, 800 W, 900 W — is cooking output, not socket draw: a magnetron and its transformer run at roughly 65% efficiency, so an 800 W oven actually pulls about 1230 W. Grill and convection modes use resistive elements where the rated wattage is the draw, and convection cycles on a thermostat once the cavity is hot, so all three are handled separately.
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Costing an 800 W oven at 800 W understates the bill by about 54% — the socket draw is used instead.
A 3 W display running every hour of the year adds about 26 kWh, which is often more than a light user's cooking energy.
Solo, grill and convection are modelled with their own draw and duty cycle, including the full-power preheat before a bake.
About 0.10 kWh for a five-minute run on an 800 W oven, which is roughly 80 paise at ₹8 a unit. The oven draws around 1230 W from the socket while running, so the arithmetic is 1.23 kW × 5/60 hours.
No. The advertised 700 W or 800 W is the microwave energy delivered to the food; the power drawn from the wall is higher because the magnetron and transformer are about 65% efficient. Divide the rated output by 0.65 to get the approximate input, or read the input wattage on the rating plate at the back.
Only in proportion to the time the magnetron actually runs. Power level 50% does not halve the draw — it switches the magnetron on for roughly half of each cycle, so a run at 50% for the same number of minutes uses about half the energy, but food usually needs longer at the lower setting, which cancels much of the saving.
For reheating and small portions, almost always — a microwave heats only the food, while a full-size 2000 W oven spends most of its energy heating a large empty cavity. For boiling large volumes or slow cooking, a gas hob or pressure cooker is usually cheaper per meal.
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