Poultry house energy cost — kWh per day, per bird, per kg.
Model the electrical load of a broiler, layer or breeder house across fans, cooling, lighting and ancillary drives. Returns kWh per day, cycle and year, annual cost, cost per bird placed, cost per kg live weight, and the share ventilation takes — the number that decides whether a fan retrofit is worth quoting.
Inputs
Results
Electricity per day
333 kWh
Average across the cycle. Peak summer days on a tunnel-ventilated house can run 2–3× this figure.
Electricity per cycle
16,672 kWh
50 days including brooding, when fan hours are low but heating demand is high.
Electricity per year
116,704 kWh
7 cycles per year.
Annual electricity cost
$16,339
At $0.14/kWh. Excludes fixed capacity charges, demand tariffs and fuel used for heating.
Cost per bird placed
$0.078
Electricity only — the figure to benchmark between houses of different size.
Cost per kg live weight
$0.0324
Compare against your feed cost per kg to see how much of the margin energy actually consumes.
Ventilation share
73%
Where fans dominate, high-efficiency fans and correct static-pressure management pay back faster than any other retrofit.
Accuracy
±30% (Class 4)
Indicative planning estimate. Real consumption depends on climate year, controller strategy, insulation and fan efficiency at working static pressure.
A tunnel-ventilated broiler house of roughly 1,800 m² typically draws in the order of 300–900 kWh per day averaged over a cycle, with hot-weather peaks well above that. Ventilation is normally the largest single electrical load; heating fuel is usually gas or biomass and is accounted separately.
Electricity commonly lands between USD 0.02 and 0.09 per broiler placed depending on climate, tariff and fan efficiency. Hot-climate houses running long tunnel hours sit at the top of that band; temperate houses with staged minimum ventilation sit at the bottom. Benchmark your own number rather than adopting a published average.
In hot climates: tunnel fans first, then cooling pumps, then lighting and ancillary drives. In cold climates: circulation fans and heating auxiliaries dominate, and minimum-ventilation strategy determines how much heat is thrown away. The ventilation share output tells you which retrofit matters on your site.
In rough order of payback: correct static-pressure and inlet management, replacing low-efficiency fans with high-airflow-per-watt models, sealing the house envelope, LED lighting with dimming, variable-speed drives on minimum ventilation, and only then solar. Measure before buying — the ventilation share output shows whether fan upgrades can move the number at all.
No. This calculator sizes electricity. Brooding gas, LPG or biomass is a separate cost line — use the heating calculator to size the thermal load, then price the fuel locally.
