Thinking about power usage ...

[Minxy]

Okay, it's NOT a MH thread, sorry, but as this is where most people hang out it seems sensible to put this in here!

With the home energy suppliers going into freefall it's got us thinking about our usage at home, we have gas for heating & most cooking and electric for lighting, sockets etc; we have various kitchen gadgets (halogen, Remoska, microwave etc) so this accounts for a bit of cooking too.

Hubby tells me that the price of gas has gone up a lot more than electric so the question ... which is the most economic 'fuel to use for cooking now?

 

[Langtoftlad]

Temporarily gas
...but as a lot of power stations are now gas fired, electricity won't be left behind for long.

Despite the price, gas is best for kitchens as it provides instant usable heat, and doesn't have wasted residual heat .

That's why is used in professional kitchens.

 

[dash300]

Temporarily gas
...but as a lot of power stations are now gas fired, electricity won't be left behind for long.

Despite the price, gas is best for kitchens as it provides instant usable heat, and doesn't have wasted residual heat .

That's why is used in professional kitchens.

Induction hobs also provide instant usable heat with no residual he wastage.

 

[DuxDeluxe]

Temporarily gas
...but as a lot of power stations are now gas fired, electricity won't be left behind for long.

Despite the price, gas is best for kitchens as it provides instant usable heat, and doesn't have wasted residual heat .

That's why is used in professional kitchens.

Induction is far superior in that nearly all the energy is transformed into instant useable heat

 

[Langtoftlad]

Do

Induction is far superior in that nearly all the energy is transformed into instant useable heat

Surely any electricity is fundamentally inefficient as it's created by another fuel?
Haven't been in the industry for awhile, but don't know of any professional kitchens using induction hobs...

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[DuxDeluxe]

Do

Surely any electricity is fundamentally inefficient as it's created by another fuel?
Haven't been in the industry for awhile, but don't know of any professional kitchens using induction hobs...

Maybe not (I have seen them on TV though) but no heat energy is wasted at point of use whereas with gas a huge amount of hand scorching heat goes right up the side of the pan and through the extractor.

 

[TheBig1]

The amount of heat you can get from each £`1 of gas is far higher than electricity

 

[Clickem]

Last time I looked gas was about 4 times the price of electricity per unit of power. So for heating gas wins

 

[Northern Boy]

Despite the price, gas is best for kitchens as it provides instant usable heat, and doesn't have wasted residual heat .

Do you remember when we changed over from town gas to natural gas there was an advert

Cook, cook, cookability, thats the beauty of gas.

 

[Odd-no-more]

In reality cooking uses very little power compared with the average home's total use, heating and hot water take most of the power, that's why insulation is so important, it doesn't matter how cheap the fuel is if it escapes into the air outside. I don't know why new homes have such poor standards, I would have thought a heat recovery system should be mandatory for all new builds as well as better insulation

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[Northern Boy]

I don't know why new homes have such poor standards,

I would agree with you. Up here in the far far North (we are about 60 degrees north) where our winters dip to minus 30 centigrade, I can keep our old house 1948 at 20 degrees overnight when outside its minus 20 with the wind blowing, without heating. In the UK at minus 5 I would have to keep the gas boiler going all night!

Up here we are timber construction and we have 30 cm of insulation in the roof, the walls are packed with horse hair and we have a warm wall, a warm wall is inside the house, the stove, which is wood fired has the flue going up and down inside the wall before it exits via the chimney. We can then shut off the chimney when the fire goes out to stop the cooler air going up and outside, keeping the brick wall warm for 12 to 18 hours.

We also have what I call the monster, which I fire up when tempratures are constantly below 10 degrees day and night. Its about two cubic meters of solid dense concrete blocks with a wood fire inside that keeps warm for 48 hours after I fire it up for say 3 hours. Once the fire is out, I take out all the embers and ash, I shut it all down and close the chimney access too.

Our other house a log cabin in the garden built in 2019 is pretty good even by Northern Baltic standards, but its not as good as the 1948 house.

We heat with electric and lumber, the lumber I buy as logs but also cut our own trees, cut to rounds and split.

UK house builders or should I say the building standards authority need to up their game, the fuel saved would be enormous if the insulation and construction standards were upped.

My son in law has a new house close to the city with heat recovery systems linked to his own geothermal system with pipes running all under the garden, I will be interested to see how that all works over the winter. It worked quite well when we had plus 30 degrees during the summer, not air conditioning but the system also keeps the house cooler when needed too.

 

[Clickem]

Last time I looked gas was about 4 times the price of electricity per unit of power. So for heating gas wins

Sorry, got that wrong way around. Electricity about 4X price of gas/kWhr

 

[mitzimad]

Maybe not (I have seen them on TV though) but no heat energy is wasted at point of use whereas with gas a huge amount of hand scorching heat goes right up the side of the pan and through the extractor.

i suspect they use them in tv studios because of the difficulties in getting gas to a studio set

 

[DuxDeluxe]

i suspect they use them in tv studios because of the difficulties in getting gas to a studio set

True; personally I would never go back to using gas. Even with thick pans the heat is nearly instant on and instant off And I don’t burn my hands stir frying either

 

[Odd-no-more]

i suspect they use them in tv studios because of the difficulties in getting gas to a studio set

Years ago I was asked to set up a cookery display in a Currys store, they wanted a NG cylinder next to the display area. I refused to do it, I put the cylinder outside and piped the gas to the area, it took hours and we didn't get paid any more, but at least it was safe.

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