How Many kWh Per Day Is Normal? Average 1-6 Person Home kWh Usage

It is useful to know how many kWh a house uses per day. It might be that you just want to know the average kWh daily usage to see how much you will pay for electricity, or you might be thinking about how to size solar panels adequately. Here is how homeowners phrase these types of questions on forums:

“How many kWh a day is normal? I’ve been getting $300 electricity bills for a 4-person house, is this normal?”

“How many kilowatts does a house use? I’m thinking of installing 10kW solar panels but don’t really know if that’s enough.”

“What is your  daily kWh usage? Is 50 kwh a day a lot? That’s what we have been using lately.”

To help everybody with these kinds of questions out, we have used statistical analysis to determine exactly how much power a house uses per day. Since bigger households tend to use more kWh per day, we have calculated how many kilowatt-hours do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6+ person homes use.

Example: A 1 person home has an average kWh usage of 20.11 kWh per day (that is 31.5% below average home usage). A 5 person home has an average kWh usage of 39.55 kWh per day (that is 35.6% above average home usage).

To adequately determine how much electricity a home uses, we need the kWh usage data for homes across the US.

Luckily, the US Energy Information Administration releases Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) datasets every few years. These include the exact data that we need: Electricity paid by all US households within 1 year.

Basically, if we have a look at monthly electricity bills for all US homes, we can calculate the average kWh consumption. Further on, we can calculate how many kWh an average house uses, and what is the normal daily kWh usage by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6+ person homes.

Let’s start with the absolute US average kWh usage from the RECS datasets:

Average Home kWh Usage Per Day

To calculate this, we will use the latest fully released RECS data (more than 89 PDF and Excel sheets available here). Here is the total US residential electricity consumption of 118.2 million US homes:

• All in all, we use 1,267 billion kWh of electricity per year. The total cost of this electricity is $219.34 billion annually.
• We spend 214.2 billion kWh (16.9%) on air conditioning.
• We spend 186.9 billion kWh (14.8%) on space heating (usually on heat pumps).

The RECS data breaks down household electricity usage for different applications. Namely, we see that air conditioning and space heating use a big chunk of kWh, other listed electric-power appliances we have data for include water heating, clothes washers, clothes dryers, lighting, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, humidifiers, HVAC air handlers, and so on.

Now, given that these datasets are made for all 118.2 million US homes, we can calculate the average yearly kWh use per home. Further on, we can calculate the kWh use on monthly, weekly, and, our end goal here, daily use.

Here are the results:

• An average home will use 10,720 kWh of electricity per year.
• That comes to 893.33 kWh per month.
• To 205.59 kWh per week.
• … And, finally, to 29.37 kWh per day.

We have the definitive US average answer now: An average home will use 29.37 kWh per day. However, it is very important to understand this is the average for all homes.

Obviously, 1-person apartment will have lower average daily kWh usage than a 4-person house, right? In order to get tangible data on how many kWh a day is normal for your specific home, let’s have a look at what is the average kWh daily use for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6-person homes.

How Many kWh A Day Is Normal For 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Family Homes

The RECS data also offer insight into yearly kWh usage by household size. We have converted these average kWh data to kWh by day and kWh per month for you to have a good sense of how many kWh you should be using (ballpark figures). Here is the full chart by family size:

As we can see from the chart, here is how many kWh per day is normal for 1-6+ person households (and comparison to the average household 29.37 kWh daily usage:

• Average electricity usage for 1 person home is 20.11 kWh per day. That is 31.5% below the US household average.
• Average electricity usage for 2 person home is 29.30 kWh per day. That is 0.2% below the US household average (also exactly the same as US home average).
• Average electricity usage for 3 person home is 31.19 kWh per day. That is 6.2% above the US household average.
• Average electricity usage for 4 person home is 36.58 kWh per day. That is 24.5% above the US household average.
• Average electricity usage for 5 person home is 39.83 kWh per day. That is 35.6% above the US household average.
• Average electricity usage for 6+ person home is 39.55 kWh per day. That is 34.7% above the US household average.

We see something interesting here. Namely, an average 6+ family home will use less electricity per day than an average 5 family homes. This is primarily because the biggest households usually use gas-powered furnaces for heating (not heat pumps that run on electricity).

---

As you can see, the normal kWh daily power usage for US households ranges between about 20 and 40 kWh per day. 50 kWh per day, for example, is an-above average daily kWh home usage.

We hope that this analysis will help you determine how many kWh per day your home uses, or estimate the size of the solar system that you need. If you have any questions, you can use the comment section below; give us some numbers, and we will try to help you out.