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What does electricity cost for a Thai laundromat?
Short answer
It depends mostly on the dryer type. Shops with gas dryers report electricity of roughly THB 6,000–12,000 per month plus gas of THB 7,000–15,000. All-electric shops have no gas bill but a much higher electricity bill — one installer puts a medium shop at roughly THB 30,000–80,000 per month. All of these figures come from third parties, not from TOKIWASH measurements.
Why there is no single number
Almost all of a laundromat's energy cost sits in drying, not washing. Washing draws power to turn the drum and pump water; drying produces sustained heat for tens of minutes. Two shops with identical machine counts can differ several-fold in their electricity bill if one dries with gas and the other with electricity.
Four variables drive the difference: dryer type, actual cycles per day, meter type and tariff, and the prevailing Ft charge. Comparing two shops' bills without stating all four is close to meaningless.
What do operating shops actually report?
The most granular publicly available figures come from an operator running two branches for three years with gas dryers, who published this monthly cost structure per branch.
| Line | Per month (THB) |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 70,000–130,000 |
| Water | 6,000–13,000 |
| Electricity | 6,000–12,000 |
| Gas | 7,000–15,000 |
| Rent | 10,000–25,000 |
| Cleaning staff | 8,000–10,000 |
| Total operating cost | 37,000–75,000 |
Note that gas exceeds electricity in this configuration, and that water, electricity and gas together run at roughly a quarter to a third of revenue — higher than the marketing material in this category typically implies.
On the electric side, an installer who reports having built more than 100 shops puts electric dryers at roughly 15–25 kWh per cycle, with a medium shop's electricity around THB 30,000–80,000 per month. He also names the common mistake: hiring a general electrician who never calculates total load or meter sizing, which produces voltage drops, tripping breakers and bills over budget.
Which is cheaper, electric or gas drying?
On energy cost per cycle alone, gas usually wins: heat delivered from LPG costs materially less per unit than resistive electric heating. Anyone claiming electric drying is cheaper without giving a per-cycle figure should be asked for one.
But per-cycle energy is not the whole comparison. A gas system carries costs and risks that never appear on a monthly bill: the floor area reserved for a gas room, the permitting, pipework inspection and maintenance, and safety exposure — a gas leak caused an explosion at a laundromat three days after it opened in 2018, injuring nine people.
Our position: TOKIWASH installs the gas dryer variant of the COMBO as standard, because energy cost per cycle is lower — and we are not going to hide that a gas system costs floor area, permitting and pipework maintenance in return. The full comparison is in the gas-versus-electric guide. Where gas cannot be installed, the same model is available with an electric dryer.
How to estimate the bill for your own shop
Use this as a starting point, and ask whichever brand you are talking to for the real figures of the machines they would install.
- Monthly kWh = (kWh per dry cycle × dry cycles per day) + (kWh per wash cycle × wash cycles per day), × 30.
- Monthly cost = monthly kWh × your tariff including Ft, for your meter type.
- Add the loads that are not the machines: air conditioning, 24-hour lighting, water heating, pumps and the coin changer.
- Check whether the premises can carry the total load. A three-phase upgrade or a transformer change is a first-day capital cost that rarely appears in a brochure — one documented case exceeded THB 100,000.
Send us the location and floor area and our team will calculate the electrical load and estimate the bill for a machine mix suited to that site, including whether a supply upgrade is needed — before you sign a lease.
The figure TOKIWASH is preparing to publish
No brand publishes measured kWh per cycle for the machines it sells in Thai, even though electricity is investors' number one cost anxiety. We are compiling it from operating branches and will publish it together with the measurement method, the number of branches and the period covered, so it can be checked and compared.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the monthly electricity bill for a laundromat in Thailand?
- It depends mostly on dryer type. Gas-dryer shops report electricity of roughly THB 6,000–12,000 per month plus gas of THB 7,000–15,000. All-electric shops carry no gas cost but a higher electricity bill, with one installer citing roughly THB 30,000–80,000 per month for a medium shop.
- How many kWh does a commercial dryer use per cycle?
- An installer with more than 100 shops built puts electric dryers at roughly 15–25 kWh per cycle. The real figure depends on model, capacity, set temperature and how wet the load is. Always ask the supplier for the figure for the exact model being installed.
- What share of revenue do utilities take?
- In the published operator cost structure, water, electricity and gas together run at roughly a quarter to a third of revenue — higher than category marketing material typically implies, so projections should use operator figures rather than brochure figures.
- Do I need a three-phase supply?
- It depends on the total load of the machines and the building's existing supply. Shops running several commercial machines usually need three-phase, and some locations require a transformer upgrade — a cost that rarely appears in brochures and should be checked before signing a lease.