Electricity Challenge - In the Kitchen

I figured the most logical place to continue my electricity audit would be the kitchen. After all, the kitchen is the central hub of the home...appliances. Nearly everything in the kitchen uses electricity!!!! Have you ever noticed that?

Here's a list of the things in my kitchen that use electricity:

* fridge
* freezer
* microwave
* oven
* grill
* hot plates
* fish tank.... which has *nothing * to do with eating I assure you
* breadmaker
* kettle
* rangehood
* dishwasher

Those are just the things that are on or plugged into power all the time!!!!

Then you have:

* toaster
* electric frypan
* foodprocessor
* popcorn maker
* donut maker
* sandwich maker
* pie maker
* hot dog maker..... mmm.... think we have too many "makers"?
* slow cooker 3 lt
* slow cooker 6 lt
* kenwood mixer
* juicer
* George Foreman grill
* egg poacher

Scarily enough, there is probably 1 or 2 items I've forgotten we even own. So it's not surprising that the kitchen is responsible for a reasonable chunk of the electricity that we use.

Eating really has a LOT to answer for doesn't it? How often have you heard people say we'd have plenty of money and time if we didn't have to eat? Of course, life would be a lot less fun too!

I have been doing some research into what certain appliances are costing us (approximately) to run.

A 600L fridge costs somewhere around $0.06c per hour to run. A 450L freezer costs around $0.03c. This isn't something I can change but keeping them full is supposed to help with their efficiency.

We're also *trying* to train our children NOT to stand in front of the fridge for half an hour while they decide what they'd like to eat. Perhaps I need to keep a list on the front of what is in there that they can have so that they don't do this. Hmmmm.....there's an idea. Note to self: make a laminated A4 sheet for the front of the fridge.

Come summer, I also plan to keep cold water in one of those esky coolers with a tap so that everyone isn't going to the fridge for cold drinks all the time.

Boiling Water:

I did a little *test* this morning with boiling enough water for 2 cuppas which is around 4 metric cups.

Kettle took almost 2.5 minutes to boil. @ 0.45c per minute (27c per hr) that cost 1.12c.

Microwave took 5 minutes. @ 20c per hour that cost 1.67c

Stovetop took 8 minutes. @ 18c per hour that cost 2.4c

Obviously the kettle is the way to go (which we all knew anyway). I also timed the kettle boiling with double the amount of water and it took just over 4 minutes. So you don't double the time to boil double the quantity of water.

Something else I noticed with the kettle was that I could hear it boiling for almost a minute before the automatic cut-out cut in. So I could save myself around half a cent by manually turning off the kettle each time when I hear it boiling.

One thing I could be doing is boiling water in the kettle for things like pasta and rice rather than simply putting cold water into the saucepan. It's one more step for me but would be quicker as well as use less electricity.


Cooking:

To cook a 2kg roast:

Oven takes around 2 hours + (well, mine does anyway) so @ 36c per hour that is 72c

Microwave on convection only takes 2 hours so @ 24c per hour that is 48c

Electric Frypan takes around 2 hours so @ 20c per hour that is 40c

Microwave on combination (part microwave and part convection) takes 1 hour so @ 24c per hour that is 24c

Slow Cooker takes around 4-6 hours so @ 2c per hour that is 8-10c

The slow cooker beats everything else by miles in terms of cost of cooking. Which is great as I much prefer most of our roasts done in there anyway. It's so much easier and my oven is painfully slow for some reason.

My next project is to attempt to bake a cake in the slow cooker. Has anyone already tried that? I wonder if I need a special recipe or whether my usual recipes would work the same?

I do have another plan for summer cooking though. DH is going to help me make a solar cooker! You can find some examples of solar cookers here . When it comes to cooking, well you can't really beat *free* can you? :-)

Washing Up:

Here's one I'd rather not know about. A dishwasher costs around 36c per hour to run (on average). Our cycle is around 90 minutes so that's around 54c a day (we run it once a day). Generally all our cooking dishes are washed by hand so the dishwasher takes all the cups, plates and cutlery for the day. I'm not quite ready to give up the convenience of the dishwasher though.

* Figures based on Country Energy: Energy Wise Guide. All are approximate and will vary depending on the actual cost per kWh from your energy provider as well as the number of watts the individual appliance actually draws.