There has been some question about the cost of running the sous vide for long periods. I cooked the chuck roast for 29 hours. There’s a corned beef recipe I’d love to try and it cooks for 72 hours. Most of our power comes from solar panels so I’m not concerned but I hate recommending something that’s too expensive for the average person to use so I did a little online research.
Whatever you read online, either here on the blog or elsewhere, you have to trust the writer (oh, no! <G>) or the info is worthless but here’s a bit of info I found on the web about the cost of using a sous vide.
This site went through a detailed experiment, which I found quite interesting. They used an open water bath, a container with a lid and a container wrapped in a towel (which is what I use), as well as a couple of other methods. They used a meter to track the power usage and calculated it for 12 hours and 24 hours of use. They based the power rate at .15/kWh. I’m sure it’s more in other parts of the country/world but I’m paying .13/kWh for power I buy. I’m sure we’re all going to be paying way more in the coming years but for now, I’m happy with .13.
Anyway, that study hows that it costs 35 cents to run the sous vide for 24 hours and for a 72 hour cook, it cost them $1.04 (because the startup costs the most and then it doesn’t cost so much after that).
This site does a similar study and says the cost of a 24 hour cook with anything from an 800 wat to a 1200 watt device would be less than $2.00.
Then, because I love this kind of info, I found a calculator for how much it costs to run an electric stove burner. One 1500 watt burner on an electric stove, used for 2 hours would cost about 45 cents with the same .15/kWh rate.
An electric oven on 350 for one hour would cost about 32 cents.
I wish I hadn’t looked at the cost of propane but . . my choice was propane or electric for the stove and I am happy to be paying whatever they charge for propane in order to have a gas stove.
What are your thoughts?