How Has Your Tumbler Really Affected Your Electricity Costs?
If you’ve recently purchased a tumbler for surface finishing projects, you may be curious how the addition of your machine has impacted electricity costs. If you’re considering purchasing a tumbler, this might also be a pertinent question.
Whether you’ll notice an increase in your electricity bill—and to what extent—is dependent on a number of factors. The type of tumbler you’ve purchased is a major one. There are many different types of tumblers on the market. At Kramer Industries, for example, we offer five different types of deburring tumblers, all of which range in size and function. Typically, the larger the tumbler you purchase, the more energy it’s going to require during operation.
Another factor to take into consideration is the frequency with which you have been, or will be, using your tumbler. It probably comes as no surprise that the more you run your tumbler, the more electricity it requires. However, if you’ve simply upgraded to a new tumbler model or had been paying to outsource your surface finishing work, the change in your overall bottom line will probably be minimal.
To get a ballpark figure of electricity costs, let’s start with the current average cost of watts. In general, 1,000 watts will cost 10 cents. This might fluctuate by region, but it’s a solid average to work with. Knowing that, you can multiply by the average number of watts a tumbler uses per hour to get a general cost range. Again, the required wattage of a tumbler depends on its size and model, but typically you’d expect wattage to be between 2,000 and 4,000 per hour, at a cost of about 20 cents to 40 cents per hour. Note that on your electricity bill, this wattage will be presented in kilowatts, which measures watts in thousands. In this example, a bill would show that you’ve used 2-4 KwH (kilowatts per hour).
Knowing these variables can help you estimate the cost of a future electricity bill.
For example, let’s say you know your tumbler requires (W) watts of energy per hour. You also know that you typically run your machine eight hours a day, five days a week, giving you an estimate for time-in-use during any given month (T). And, we already know that 1,000 watts of electricity costs about ten cents (M). If you know your exact cost per watt, replace (M) with that number.
Multiply (W) by (T) by (M) to arrive at the total estimated cost your tumbler will contribute to an electricity bill.
Of course, another way to ballpark a tumbler’s impact on your electricity bill is to compare electricity bills—assuming no other factors that would change costs were introduced during that same time. Look at electricity cost prior to purchasing your tumbler and your electricity cost after purchasing and perform some simple subtraction work between the two bills. For a stronger comparison, find the average of the last five or six electricity bills prior to operating the tumbler; working with averages usually gives a clearer picture and helps identify outlier months.
Have more questions about tumbler energy use, or how much electricity one of our specific tumbler models might require? We’re happy to chat. Give us a call at 1-888-515-9443 or reach out to us online anytime.
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