What is the Power Consumption of a Watercooler?
Average Power Consumption
At standard office conditions (21ºC air temperature), the water cooler is capable of producing a maximum of 5.9 litres of cold water per hour and 7.9 litres of hot water per hour.
To produce 5.9 litres of cold water, the unit will consume approximately 80Wh (Watt hours) of electricity. That translates to 13.6Wh of electricity to produce 1 litre of cold water.
To produce 7.9 litres of hot water, the unit will consume approximately 450Wh of electricity. That translates to 57Wh of electricity to produce 1 litre of hot water.
Cook & Cold Units
The total power required to produce X litres of cold water per day can be modelled as 13.6X + 160Wh.
For example, to produce 8 litres of cold water per day, the water cooler will consume 8 x 13.6 + 160 = 269WH of electricity.
The power consumption of a water cooler is dependent on two main conditions:
- Ambient temperature
- Usage of the water cooler
There are a number of different methods for estimating the power consumption of a water cooler. These can be summarised as:
- Standby Energy Consumption#
- Average Power Consumption
Standby Energy Consumption
There is no European standard for measuring standby energy consumption. OASIS uses the American “Energy Star” protocol for this purpose. Standby Energy consumption is defined as the power to “dead cycle” the water cooler – i.e. power is connected to the cooler and no hot or cold water is drawn from the cooler. The cooler is located in a room that is controlled at a temperature of 24ºC and the power required to hold cold water temperatures at 10ºC and to hold the hot water temperature at 80ºC (for hot models only) is recorded.
The results are as follows:
Standby Power Consumption (Cook & Cold):
160 Watt.hours of electricity per day
Standby Power Consumption (Hot & Cold):
726 Watt.hours of electricity per day