Using an oven typically costs £1.02 per hour, according to home services provider Hometree.
Martin Lewis, a financial expert, has cautioned that switching from an oven to an air fryer or a microwave may not result in significant energy bill savings.
As the cost-of-living crisis persists, Mr. Lewis warned that air fryers and microwaves might not be more cost-effective than ovens.
According to the money-saving expert’s podcast, using the oven might sometimes be more cost effective than using a microwave or air fryer to prepare some dishes.
Mr. Lewis argued that while it is rational to cook a single jacket potato in the microwave for a short period to save on energy costs, preparing a full roast for a large group of people in the microwave is probably more expensive than an oven.
“The issue with the equation for heating equipment is that an oven will be about 2000W,” he stated.
In contrast to an oven, which warms to temperature before topping off, a microwave emits heat steadily throughout the cooking process.
However, cooking a jacket potato in the microwave for 10 minutes will be much less expensive than baking a single jacket potato for an hour and a half.
“However, if you were cooking a full roast dinner and cooking a lot of them, it’s probably less expensive than putting five or six jacket potatoes in a microwave because a microwave only heats the individual object. It would help if you kept it on longer.
The financial expert described how to determine how much it will cost to operate an appliance using a straightforward equation.
The general formula is to determine an item’s wattage, determine how many kilowatts or what percentage of a kilowatt it consumes, and then multiply that number by 34p for each hour of use.
If you had a 1000W microwave and used it for 10 minutes, using one KWH for a sixth of an hour would cost around 6p. Therefore, turning on the microwave for that long is at 6 p.m. It is, thus, a very helpful equation.
Home services provider Hometree says the typical oven uses about 3kW, translating to a cost of about £1.02 per hour.
According to the company’s analysis, the most energy-efficient kitchen appliances are microwaves and slow cookers, which cost about 30p per hour to run on average, compared to air fryers, which have an average wattage of 1kW.
According to Hometree, a 700w microwave costs 23.8p an hour to run whereas a 5p an hour slow cooker.
