Actually…almost negligibly nothing.
A typical heat pad uses less power than a hair dryer and runs for twenty minutes, so a session costs well under a cent. Even daily use through the year lands somewhere around the price of a plate of chicken rice.
If the electricity bill is the reason you’ve been hesitating, stop hesitating. Here’s the arithmetic.
How to work it out for your own pad
Find the wattage on the rating label, on the pad itself or on the controller. Most household pads sit somewhere between 40W and 100W. That label is worth reading anyway: what to check on a heat pad’s rating label.
The sum: watts, divided by 1000, multiplied by hours used, multiplied by your tariff per kWh. Recent Singapore household tariffs have been around 30 cents per kWh, and yours is printed on your bill.
A 60W pad for 20 minutes is 0.06 x 0.33 hours = about 0.02 kWh. At 30 cents, that’s under a cent per session. Three sessions a day, every day for a year, comes to roughly six or seven dollars.
In context
| Appliance | Rough draw |
|---|---|
| Heat pad | 40 to 100W |
| Laptop | 50 to 100W |
| Ceiling fan | 50 to 75W |
| Hair dryer | 1000 to 2000W |
| Kettle | 1500 to 2500W |
| Bedroom aircon | 700 to 1500W |
Boiling one kettle of water uses more electricity than a fortnight of heat pad sessions, which is worth remembering when comparing a pad with a hot water bottle or a microwave pack. The aircon you run while using the pad costs many times more than the pad does; see the cold office and an electric blanket vs a heat pad, which is the one that does add up.
A pad doesn’t draw full power the whole time
The wattage on the label is what the pad draws while heating up. Once it reaches the set temperature, a thermostatic pad cycles the element on and off to hold it there, so average consumption over a session is lower than the label suggests. A pad that has lost that regulation costs more and is unsafe: what to check when a heat pad stops heating properly.
A higher setting costs slightly more, because the element runs more of the time.
The difference is fractions of a cent, so choose your setting for your skin, not your bill. See what temperature should a heating pad be?
The cost that isn’t on the bill
Running a pad all evening or overnight doesn’t cost much money.
It costs skin.
Low-temperature burns come from long contact, not high settings, and that’s the real reason to keep sessions to 15 or 20 minutes rather than leaving it on. Months of daily use on one spot leaves its own mark: toasted skin syndrome.
See how long to use a heating pad and is it safe to sleep with a heating pad on?
Standby and leaving it plugged in
A pad switched off at the controller but still in the socket draws a negligible amount, so this isn’t a money question either. Unplug it at the wall anyway. A pad that can’t be switched on by accident is a pad that can’t be left running on a bed by accident.
Running several, in a clinic or gym
Six pads running all day still costs less than a fraction of what a heated water tank does, which is one of the practical arguments in hydrocollator vs electric heat pads. Ordering for a practice: heat pads for clinics, gyms and physiotherapy practices.
Where the money actually goes when you buy one: how much should a heat pad cost in Singapore? and what a physio looks for in a heating pad.
The heat pad we use
We’ve supplied the Bremed BD7800 since 2010. It holds a steady temperature, covers a whole lower back and has a machine-washable cotton cover. Physiotherapy clinics in Singapore use it with their patients.
Clinically reviewed by: Nigel Chua (Hand Occupational Therapist) & Louise Yow (Physiotherapist). This article is general information, not a diagnosis. electricheatpad.com sells electric heat pads.
