How Much Electricity Does a Ceiling Fan Use?

Electricity is billed in units, and a unit is a kilowatt drawn for an hour. So: watts × hours per day × days per year ÷ 1,000 gives units a year, and multiplying by your tariff gives rupees. A 75 W fan at 12 hours a day for 210 days is 189 units, which at ₹8 is ₹1,512.

On a conventional induction fan with a resistive regulator, reducing the speed drops the voltage at the motor and dissipates the difference as heat inside the regulator itself. The meter still sees much of that power. This is why an old fan on speed one can draw nearly as much as on speed five, and why the regulator gets warm.

Electronic step regulators are better, and a BLDC fan is better still: its controller genuinely reduces the power drawn, so speed one really does cost a fraction of speed five. If you habitually run fans on low, that alone is an argument for BLDC.

A 1.5 ton inverter AC draws roughly 900-1,500 W in normal operation. A ceiling fan draws 28-75 W — between twenty and forty times less. Running fans alongside an AC lets you set the AC two degrees higher, and the fans almost always cost less than the AC saves.