The invention discloses a metallic oxide voltage limiter design energy consumption estimating method and device. According to the method, when short-circuit currents exceed a serial compensation bypass MOV current fixed value, approximate estimation is carried out on energy consumption of an MOV by means of a product of the energy consumption maximum gradient (dE/dt) max and responding time (Tbp); when the short-circuit currents do not exceed the serial compensation bypass MOV current fixed value, approximate estimation is carried out on energy consumption of the MOV by means of a sum of an energy consumption set value (Eset) of the MOV and energy increment estimated values in a control protection system and interval responding time (Tbp). Compared with the prior art, only a series connection compensation device needs simple modeling in the process of calculating MOV design energy consumption, detailed parameters of the series connection compensation device are not needed and mass comprehensive simulation on all sorts of intra-zone faults is not needed. Thus, workloads are reduced and the MOV design energy consumption value can be rapidly obtained through calculation within the allowing range of meeting engineering requirements.