This work proposes a generic thermal model of electrical appliances in order to evaluate the influence of their thermal gain on low energy buildings. To this purpose, home electrical appliances are firstly classified into four categories according to thermal and electrical points of view. A generic physically driven thermal model is then established based on the first thermodynamics principle. In order to analyze the relevance of the proposed generic model applied to practical cases, the corresponding ARX and ARMAX models are firstly derived. Then, an identification method based on the least square approach is applied to these models in order to get the corresponding parameters. Finally, the parameters of the generic model are calculated and the model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink (R). The case of a refrigerator is studied in order to illustrate the proposed approach. The matching between the measurements on the actual system and the results of simulation based on the identified generic model of the appliance validate the proposed approach. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.