What an ice maker costs to run

This is the question the category never answers, and the answer turns out to be reassuring enough that it should change how you shop: the electricity is close to irrelevant, so buy on purchase price, output and how long the machine survives instead.

The method, stated up front

Everything below is computed, not collected, so the arithmetic is worth showing before the numbers. A machine's rated output assumes it runs continuously for 24 hours with the basket emptied as it fills. Under that same assumption, energy per kilogram of ice is the power draw multiplied by 24 hours, divided by the rated daily output.

Two honest limits on this. The rated output assumes continuous running, which no household does, so a real machine makes less ice and uses less energy than the rating implies; the cost per kilogram is roughly right even so, because both sides of the fraction fall together. And a machine sitting idle with a full basket still draws a small standby load that nobody publishes and this page does not guess at.

Tariffs and specifications checked 9 September 2026

Cost per kilogram of ice, by machine

Costed at the national mid-range. Only machines publishing both a power draw and a rated output can appear here: that is 28 of the 58 countertop machines we sourced.

"A summer" is 2kg of ice a day for 90 days, which is a generous household estimate: two full baskets a day, every day, from October to January.

The same machine, in every state

Electricity prices vary by roughly half again across the country, so the same machine costs meaningfully different amounts to run depending on where you live. This table takes one representative machine, the Morphy Richards Stainless Steel Ice Maker 2.8L at 145W and 15kg per 24h, and applies each jurisdiction's default usage rate.

The spread between TAS at 27.95c and SA at 41.91c per kilowatt hour is about 1.50 times. Applied to an appliance this small, that is a difference of a few dollars across a whole summer.

Where these tariffs come from

These are indicative reference rates only. They are the regulated or default usage rates that apply where a household has not chosen a market plan. A household's actual rate varies by retailer, by plan, by distribution zone and by meter type, and competitive market offers are commonly several cents per kWh below the default. Use these figures to estimate an order of magnitude for running cost, not to predict a specific bill. Every figure below is quoted from the source named in its record and none has been estimated.

What this means for buying

If running cost is a rounding error, then the money in this decision is entirely in the purchase price and the lifespan. A $150 machine that dies after two summers is a worse buy than a $400 machine that lasts six, and no amount of energy efficiency changes that arithmetic. So the pages worth reading next are what these machines actually cost and who honours a warranty in Australia, which is where the real financial risk in this category sits.

If you are weighing a machine against simply buying bags of ice, that comparison is worked through separately in an ice maker against bagged ice.

Common questions

Is an ice maker expensive to run?

No, and it is not close. Against the dearest default tariff in the country, making 2kg of ice a day for a 90 day summer costs single-digit dollars on the machines we could cost. The purchase price is the entire financial decision. Running cost is a rounding error, which is the opposite of what people assume and the reason this page exists.

Why do you exclude the daily supply charge?

Because it is paid whether or not the appliance exists. A supply charge is a fixed daily fee for being connected to the grid, so adding it to the running cost of one appliance would attribute a cost to that appliance that it does not cause. A number of running cost calculators fold it in, which is why their figures look so much higher. Supply charges are shown separately below as context.

Why can you not cost every machine?

Because costing one requires two published numbers, power draw in watts and rated output in kilograms per 24 hours, and most listings publish at most one of them. Power draw is published for 30 of the 58 countertop machines we sourced and rated output for 52. We cost the machines that publish both and say nothing about the rest.

Does a cheaper machine cost more to run?

There is no evidence in the published data that it does, and the differences between machines are small enough in absolute terms that it would not change a purchase decision anyway. What genuinely varies by an order of magnitude is the purchase price, and after that the lifespan, which is a warranty and parts question rather than an energy one.