Our backup power comparison and solar power articles both answer a different question: what happens during a load shedding outage. This article answers a question we get less often but that's just as practical — what does a gate or garage motor actually add to the monthly electricity bill under normal, everyday use, with the mains on and no outage in sight? The short answer is: less than most people assume for the cycling itself, but the standby draw of the control board is worth understanding too.
How Much Electricity Does a Gate Motor Actually Use?
A residential sliding or swing gate motor typically draws somewhere in the region of 150 to 300 watts while actively moving the gate, with heavier-duty or underground hydraulic motors drawing more. But a single open-and-close cycle only lasts a matter of seconds to a couple of minutes depending on gate length and motor speed, so the actual energy used per cycle is tiny — a fraction of a watt-hour in most cases. Even a household running 15 to 20 cycles a day, which is a realistic number for a family coming and going, adds up to well under 1 kWh a month from the cycling motion itself. In pure kWh terms, cycling the gate motor barely registers next to a kettle, a geyser or an aircon.
Standby Draw of Control Boards: The Real Cost
The part of the running cost that actually matters is the continuous standby draw of the control board itself. The board's transformer, logic circuitry and connected accessories — safety beams, a keypad, an intercom relay — stay powered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of how often the gate moves. This standby draw is typically small on a per-hour basis, often only a few watts, but multiplied across 720-odd hours in a month it adds up to noticeably more energy than the cycling itself. For most households, this "phantom load" from the control board sitting idle is the larger share of a gate motor's true monthly electricity cost, not the visible motion of the gate opening and closing.
Estimating the Monthly Rand Cost
| Component | Typical draw | Approx. monthly energy |
|---|---|---|
| Active cycling (15-20 cycles/day) | 150-300W while moving, seconds per cycle | Under 1 kWh |
| Control board standby (idle 24/7) | 3-10W continuous | Roughly 2-7 kWh |
| Connected accessories (beams, keypad) | 1-3W continuous each | Under 1-2 kWh combined |
Put together, a typical household gate motor setup lands somewhere around 3 to 10 kWh a month in total electricity use — cycling included. At current Eskom-linked residential tariffs (which vary by municipality and whether you're on a City of Tshwane, City of Johannesburg or direct Eskom Homelight/Homepower tariff, and whether time-of-use pricing applies), that works out to a modest monthly cost, generally comparable to running a single incandescent-equivalent light for a similar number of hours. It's a real cost, but it's a small one relative to almost any other household appliance, including a single geyser element cycling for even an hour a day.
Eskom Tariff Impact
Because standby draw is constant rather than tied to specific hours, gate motor running cost isn't meaningfully affected by time-of-use tariff structures the way a geyser timer or pool pump schedule can be optimised around off-peak rates — the board draws roughly the same trickle of power at 2pm as it does at 2am. Where tariffs do matter is the general upward trend in Eskom-linked municipal electricity pricing over time, which affects every appliance's running cost proportionally, gate motors included, but doesn't change the fundamental picture that a gate motor's own running cost is a small line item next to typical household electricity use.
Cost Comparison vs a Manual Gate
A manual gate has zero electricity running cost — that's an honest, unavoidable fact. But the comparison households actually care about isn't "some cost versus none," it's whether that modest monthly cost is worth the convenience, security and load-shedding-era practicality of not physically getting out of the car to open a gate. Given that the running cost of a gate motor typically lands in the same range as a few hours of incandescent lighting a month, most households find this an easy trade to justify — the electricity cost simply isn't large enough to be the deciding factor either way. Where cost genuinely becomes a bigger factor is in backup power hardware (batteries, inverters, solar) for load shedding resilience, not the day-to-day mains electricity a motor consumes.
Keeping Running Cost Close to the Minimum
- Choose an efficient control board when installing or replacing a motor — newer SMPS-based boards generally idle at a lower draw than older transformer-based designs.
- Keep the motor serviced — a gate motor straining against a misaligned track, dry chain or worn gearbox draws more current per cycle than a well-maintained one; see our noise diagnosis guide for symptoms that often point to exactly this kind of mechanical drag.
- Don't over-accessorise unnecessarily — every additional always-on accessory adds a small continuous draw, so only wire in what's actually being used.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much electricity does a gate motor use per month?
The active cycling itself is tiny — often under 1 kWh a month — but the control board's continuous standby draw usually adds several kWh a month on top.
Does a gate motor use electricity even when it's not moving?
Yes — the control board's transformer, logic circuit and accessories draw a small continuous current around the clock, which is usually the larger share of total running cost.
Is a manual gate actually cheaper than an automated one?
In pure electricity terms yes, but the cost difference is small in rand terms compared to most household appliances, so convenience and security are usually the deciding factors, not running cost.
Can I reduce my gate motor's electricity running cost?
Choosing an efficient modern control board when replacing a motor, keeping it serviced so it isn't straining mechanically, and avoiding unnecessary always-on accessories all help.
A gate motor's day-to-day electricity cost is one of the smaller line items on a household bill, and it's a genuinely different question from backup power planning for outages. If you're weighing up whether automation is worth it purely on running cost, the honest answer is that the ongoing electricity is rarely the number that should sway the decision either way.