ENERGY STAR model lookup: what a specific appliance uses

An aisle of white and stainless domestic appliances receding down an empty showroom. — Generated illustration — a depiction, not a photograph of a specific product.

Find a model

Type a brand or a model number. The list is downloaded by this page and searched in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

Your state

Residential average for June 2026, from the EIA. Your own tariff may differ; you can read it off your bill.

Brand or model number

9,270 certified models. Partial model numbers work — most manufacturers use a common prefix across a range.

Results appear here, with the annual cost at the US average rate of 18.34¢ per kWh.

What is certified, and what that leaves out

ENERGY STAR certification is voluntary and applies to models currently on sale, so this is a catalogue of what you could buy rather than a census of what people own. That matters in one specific direction: because only the efficient models qualify, the median here sits below the median machine in American homes, most of which are neither new nor certified. Reading these figures as “what a fridge uses” would bias every estimate downwards.

Some categories exclude whole technologies. Every water heater below is a heat pump model, because a standard electric resistance tank cannot be certified at all — it converts electricity to heat at 100% and there is no headroom above that to earn a label with. The same reason is why the comparison between the two is the largest saving on this site that does not involve space heating.

Annual kilowatt-hours as certified, and what the median model costs at the US average of 18.34¢. Each category is measured by its own test procedure, so the columns are comparable down a row and not across one.

Category	Models	Most efficient	Median	Least efficient	Median, a year
Refrigerators	4,765	42	345	805	$63
Freezers	666	137	405	649	$74
Clothes washers	401	39	110	311	$20
Clothes dryers	656	122	608	687	$112
Dishwashers	753	80	239	240	$44
Room air conditioners	463	260	532	2,096	$98
Televisions	180	18	186	631	$34
Dehumidifiers	551	105	340	2,808	$62
Room air cleaners	236	30	152	490	$28
Heat pump water heaters	599	643	1,154	1,741	$212

What each number actually measures

No two of these categories are measured the same way, and the differences are large enough to change an answer. This is the part a specification sheet leaves out.

From the DOE test procedures each ENERGY STAR specification is built on. Two models in the same row are directly comparable with each other; two models in different rows are not.

Category	What its annual figure assumes
Refrigerators	DOE test procedure: a full year of continuous operation at a standard ambient temperature.
Freezers	DOE test procedure, continuous operation. The set mixes chest and upright freezers, and uprights use more for the same volume.
Clothes washers	IMEF, which includes the energy to HEAT THE WATER as well as to run the machine, over 295 cycles a year. It is therefore not comparable with a machine-only figure.
Clothes dryers	CEF over 283 cycles a year, machine energy only.
Dishwashers	DOE test procedure over 215 cycles a year, INCLUDING water heating.
Room air conditioners	CEER over an assumed 750 hours of cooling a year, which is a national assumption and not your climate.
Televisions	Five hours on and nineteen hours in standby, every day.
Dehumidifiers	IEF over an assumed 1,095 hours a year — a quarter of the time. A unit running through a wet summer runs far more.
Room air cleaners	Continuous operation at the certified fan speed.
Heat pump water heaters	UEF at a standard 64.3 gallons a day of hot water draw.

The clothes washer row is the one that surprises people. Its certified figure includes heating the water, which is most of the energy a wash uses, so a washer’s number is dominated by a load the machine only indirectly controls — and why washing cold is the single change that moves it most, whatever machine you own.

The spread inside one category

Certified refrigerators run from 42 kWh a year to 805 — 19.2×, and every one of them carries the same label. The badge is a threshold, not a ranking: it says a model is better than the federal minimum for its class, and a large certified fridge with an ice maker and a door dispenser can use more than twice what a small certified one does while both are equally entitled to the logo.

That is worth knowing before shopping by label. At 18.34¢ the gap between the two ends of the certified refrigerator range is $140 a year, which over a fifteen-year service life is $2,099 — usually more than the price difference between the two machines. The number on the yellow label is the one that decides that, not the badge next to it.

Questions

Why does this not match the appliance page for the same thing?

Because they answer different questions. An appliance page here computes what a typical unit uses from its rated power, how much of its running time it actually draws that, and how many hours a year it runs — all stated on the page and all adjustable. An ENERGY STAR figure comes from a federal test procedure with its own fixed assumptions about usage, and for washers and dishwashers it includes the energy to heat the water as well as to run the machine. Neither is wrong; they measure different things. The certified number is the better answer for a specific model you are about to buy, and this site’s number is the better answer for what a machine like yours costs in a house like yours.

Is the certified figure what I will actually use?

Only if you use it the way the test does. The test procedure for a room air conditioner assumes 750 hours of cooling a year, which is roughly right for a mixed climate and badly wrong for Phoenix or Portland. A dehumidifier is rated at 1,095 hours — a quarter of the year — while one fighting a wet basement runs far more. The certified number is excellent for comparing two models against each other, because both were tested identically. It is only an estimate of your bill.

Why is my model not here?

Because it is not ENERGY STAR certified, which most appliances in most homes are not. Certification is voluntary, it applies to current models rather than to everything ever sold, and some categories exclude whole technologies — a standard electric resistance water heater cannot be certified at all, which is why every water heater on this page is a heat pump model.

Does a lower certified number mean a cheaper machine to run?

Within a category, yes — that is exactly what the number is for, and two models tested the same way are directly comparable. Across categories it means nothing: a certified dryer at 608 kWh and a certified television at 186 kWh are not competing for the same job.

Source: U.S. EPA, ENERGY STAR Certified Product Data. U.S. Government work, public domain.

Typical-unit running costs for 120 appliances · How those are computed