As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly find which appliances use the most electricity in your home.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your electricity bill or supplier account and record the unit price per kWh if it is shown.
   2. Walk around your home and make a list of the appliances that run regularly, including heating, hot water, cooking, refrigeration, laundry and entertainment equipment.
   3. Photograph or copy the wattage, voltage and model information from each appliance label or manual, without opening any appliance.
   4. For appliances with a smart plug, energy monitor or built-in consumption reading, record the measured kWh and the period covered.
   5. Paste the list, readings and unit price into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to produce the measured and estimated rankings separately.
   6. Use a plug-in energy monitor on suitable individual appliances, following its instructions, and repeat the readings for the appliances near the top of the estimated list.
   7. Paste the new readings into the chatbot and compare its revised ranking and calculations with the monitor readings and your electricity meter before deciding what to reduce or replace.

   Prompt

   Help me identify which appliances use the most electricity in my home. Use only the information I provide and show every calculation.
   
   My appliances and available information:
   [For each appliance, give its name, power rating in watts if known, estimated hours used per day or week, whether it cycles on and off, and any measured energy reading in kWh.]
   
   My electricity price, if known:
   [price per kWh]
   
   Tasks:
   1. Put the appliances in order from highest to lowest estimated electricity use.
   2. Prefer measured kWh readings over estimates, and clearly label anything based on an assumption.
   3. For appliances with only a wattage and usage time, calculate estimated kWh using power in watts multiplied by hours used, divided by 1,000.
   4. Do not invent missing ratings, usage times, prices or measurements. Ask concise questions for information that would materially change the ranking.
   5. Separate measured results from estimated results and explain the main uncertainty for each appliance.
   6. Tell me which readings I should take with an electricity meter or plug-in energy monitor to verify the top of the list.
   7. Do not recommend unsafe electrical tests or opening any appliance. Finish with a table showing appliance, evidence type, estimated or measured kWh, assumptions and confidence.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Use a tool built for this

   The distant third