I recently moved into a new house, the best thing about it is the garage. It keeps my car safe and clean, plus it’s ideal to store bikes and tools. The only annoying thing was the constant jumping in and out to open the manual door. That’s why I started looking for electric automatic door openers. As the garage has no electrical connection, I wanted to run it off-grid with a solar panel. When making an installation like this, the first thing you need to find out is the power consumption.
Below we will discuss and test garage door opener wattage, explain how to work it out for yourself, and calculate the total electricity required.
How Many Watts is a Garage Door Opener?
The average garage door opener uses between 150 to 350 watts when running.
It will also use 0.5 – 0.7 watts when in standby, which is similar to a TV on standby.
The exact number depends on the size and model of your garage door opener. Many people badly overestimate the power consumption of these devices quoting hundreds or even thousands of watts. This simply isn’t true.
While the power levels vary between units, you will rarely see it exceed a running level of 350W. Larger mechanisms for heavier or double garage doors will use around 300W. Smaller devices for lightweight or single doors use 200W or less.
If you’re installing a UPS or inverter as a backup, you should note that the door opener motor will pull a peak starting wattage which can be double the running wattage. This power spike only lasts for a second before settling down.
How to Find Out Your Garage Door Opener Wattage
There are 3 ways you can work out the wattage of a garage door opener.
- Check Product Specification
The quickest way is to look at the garage door opener’s specifications. The watts (W) are usually written on a sticker on the base of the unit. If not, you can check the user manual or the manufacturer’s website for technical details.
- Use a Wattmeter
A wattmeter is brilliant for getting a live wattage reading and tracking total energy usage of any appliance. You can simply plug it into your garage door opener to get instant information.
I used one to test a garage door opener which gave a live reading of 204.7W.
- Wattage Formula or Calculator
If you know the amperage and voltage of your garage door opener you can use this to find the maximum watt rating. Simply use the formula Amps x Volts = Watts. Or you can head over to the ‘Watt Calculator’ to work this out.
Garage Door Opener Wattage Examples
Let’s take a look at specific examples of how many watts a garage door opener draws. Below is a collection of modern garage door openers with their listed power ratings.
| Garage Door Opener Model | Power Rating (Watts) |
| Schartec Move 600 Series 3 | 200 |
| Sommer Aperto 868 L (Single Garage Doors) | 220 |
| TOPENS CASAR800 Garage Door Opener | 120 |
| Schartec Move 1000 Electric Garage Door Opener | 245 |
| FAAC D1000 Electric Garage Door Opener | 350 |
| Rademacher RolloPort S2 | 100 |
As you can see, the power ratings vary between different garage door openers. So you should take the time to check your own appliance.
How Much Electricity Does a Garage Door Opener Use?
You can use garage door opener wattage to work out how much electricity it uses. Plus this can be useful in understanding how much it costs to run your garage door opener.
A watt (W) is a measurement of power at a single point in time. A watt-hour (Wh) is the total amount of electricity used in an hour. For example, a garage door opener drawing 300W would use 300Wh when running for an hour.
Electricity bills are recorded in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts. So a 300W garage door opener running for 1 hour uses 0.3kWh.
In reality, you run a garage door opener for upto 1 minute a day. If you drive your cars most days you could rack up around 300 minutes of door opener runtime each year. That’s 5 hours.
This means a large garage door opener uses around 1.5kWh a year.
That’s a rough electricity cost of $0.20 – $0.30a year to run your electric door opener. Not bad at all!
If you only have a single garage with one car, you’ll probably use it even less than this approximation.
Using a Garage Door Opener Off-Grid
If you’re installing an off-grid solution to run your garage door in the event of a power outage or to save electricity with a solar panel, the information above is helpful. It enables you to select the correct electrical equipment and work out how long you can run.
Here is a UPS installation to give you an idea:
You also use a power inverter, solar panel, and battery to run your garage door:
To make sure everything runs smoothly you should check two things on this equipment – wattage capacity and total energy capacity.
Your power source, like an inverter, should have a wattage capacity of at least 20% more than your garage door opener. This ensures it will be able to deliver enough power as they are never 100% efficient. To open your garage door, it is best to use a 500W power source. This should comfortably operate and cope with any power spikes without risk of overloading.
Secondly, you need to ensure your energy source, like a battery, has enough energy to run the garage door opener for the required amount of time. It will upto 5Wh electricity for 1 minute runtime. This is the equivalent to 0.41Ah on a 12V battery.
So you should be able to operate with a small 10Ah battery, 30W solar panel, and a 500W inverter.
How Many Watts Does a Garage Door Opener Use Summary
I hope you now have a clear understanding of how many watts a garage door opener uses.
These devices don’t use a huge amount of power, in fact, it’s similar to a computer’s power consumption. The difference is that you don’t run it for very long, only a few seconds at a time. So you won’t run for more than a minute each day. That means the overall electricity usage is very low. You could even install small solar panels and battery run everything completely off-grid!
