What Does It Cost to Run a Fence Charger?

Editors Note: This comes to us from Steve Freeman’s Pasture Pro blog and was written by Gary Duncan. Gary has been active in the fence business for over 15 years. He also raises Highland cattle in a management intensive grazing system and was the first person to market the PasturePro post back in 2005.

Over the years many people have asked me – how much is it going to cost to run my fence charger? I usually respond that it will be “pennies per month”, but this is pretty easy to compute yourself.

The only thing you will need to know is how many watts your particular charger pulls and the kilowatt charge from your particular electric utility company. This is assuming that you have a standard mains unit that plugs into a standard 110V outlet.

The basic equation is: watts x time / 1000 = kWh

Watts = The watts per hour consumed by the electric fence charger during operation. This is probably not printed on the cover of the charger, but is usually on the box or the instruction manual that should come with it. If you don’t have the box or manual, then call the manufacturer and they should be able to tell you.

Time = The amount of time the charger is operated. This should be calculated into hours per day and then days per month. Normal you will be running your charger on a continuous basis of 24/7 and the utility company billing period is normally for a 30 day period.

1000 = Dividing by the number 1000 places the total into kilowatt-hours, which is what most utility companies use as the rate of consumption.

Example:

The power consumption of most chargers for agricultural / livestock control purposes will range from 10 watts up to 50 watts. One of the very largest ones will pull a maximum of 50 watts (I think that this will equate to running a 50 watt light bulb). Operating a 10 watt charger continuously for 24 hours per day for 30 days at a utility company rate of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour will equal:

10 watts x 24 hours per day x 30 days / 1000 = 7.2 kilowatt-hours (kWh)

7.2 kWh x 10 cents = 72 cents

So $0.72 is the cost of operating the 10 watt charger for 30 days at this rate, or a whopping cost of $8.64 per year. Now you know how much your electric fencing system is costing you to run. Pretty cheap, huh? So cheap, in fact, that I am surprised that someone hasn’t put a tax on it !!