Ok maybe I am being thick this morning but I have been monitoring my electricity usage and have found that between my PC and the electric kettle it accounts for 30% of my electricity bill. I can easily cut back on the PC as I usually just leave it running. If I switch to a kettle to use on the gas cooker and lets assume I use 1 x kwh per day with elec kettle would it be fair to assume I would use 1 x kwh for gas? To heat a similar amount.
no. probably 3-5 times more
due to wasted heat spilling into the room
lag the lectric kettle :-)
One recommendation for electric kettles, is to only heat the amount of water you require. Most of us heat far more than is necessary.
Andy C
1 kWHr is 1 kWhr no matter the source. However with the eletric kettle all of that 1 kWHr is converted into heat in the element in pretty intimate contact with the water. With a kettle on a gas hob a lot of heat goes up the sides of the kettle and there is a less intimate contact between the water and heat source.
Not sure if the meters will have fine enough resolution to get meaningful results for you to do some experiments with a measured amount of cold tap water heated to boiling by both methods. Say 5 times each with 1 l of water each time.
Yes I understand the explanations but with gas considerably cheaper than electric (in my case) even with heat loss it maybe a lot cheaper by gas...mmm experiment,experiment. Maybe a large vacuum flask is the answer, only 10.00 am and boiled the kettle 4 times for coffee and used .202 Kwh so far.
The MoneySavingExpert has forums where this has been discussed many times b efore. Accepting that accurate measurement of such small amounts of energy from the various meters that are available (particularly for gas), the dis cussions always seem to end up saying "there's bugger all difference".
The best efficiency will always come from only boiling exactly what you nee d.
Matt
The answer is obviously a gas kettle!
Indeed - and that's probably the best way to save money - don't boil up excess water which goes to waste.
As others have said, 1kWHr of energy is the same whether provided by gas or electricity. However, you'll use more gas energy boiling the kettle because some of it will heat up the room whereas nearly all of the electrical energy will go into the water. However, since the unit price of electricity is about 3 times that of gas, gas is probably cheaper despite being less efficient.
The alternative is to do what I do, and keep a store of boiling water in an insulated container. The makers of mine (Quooker) claim that the heat losses only cost 3p per day in electricity (but I haven't verified that!). Obviously you also have to pay to heat up the water which you actually use - but there is no waste, you only draw off what you need.
[Having said all that you can buy a hell of a lot of electricity for the price of a Quooker - so it's not easy to make an economic case for one. We bought ours to provide instant hot water to a kitchen tap which is a very long way from the main hot water cylinder.]
Also, we used to have a kettle designed for a gas hob, which had a hollow base with holes around it and a metal coil, which was designed to draw the heat from the gas flame up into the cavity and extract it using the metal coil, instead of much of the heat rising up the sides of the kettle as happens with a multi-purpose kettle which is designed for gas and electric hobs.
Note from the above link that a microwave may also be an option.
Also, you could consider water cooling your PC and then transferring the heat to an insulated container via a heat exchanger. This would eventually boil, or at least yield hot water which would require less energy to bring to the boil. You don't really need boiling water for either tea or coffee, just hot water.
Cheers
Dave R
Others have commented on the wasted heat when you use a gas kettle and on the fact that a gas kWhr are cheaper than electric kWHr.
A final (tiny) point is that you only get the rated kWhr from gas if you condense the water vapour. I don't think this happens when boiling a kettle, certainly not in the later stages.
Robert
It will condense eventually as the kitchen windows mist up. Meanwhile you will get some space heating whether you like it or not.
Such as
However gas and electric kettles are not equivalent. As anyone who has forgotten a gas kettle on a hob (elderly or forgetful deaf people) will testify. or their next of kin will.
No, I was being facetious and meaning a tabletop kettle with a flexible gas pipe etc!
What you also need to take into account is that the cost of a 1kWh of Gas is about a third of the cost of 1kWh of electric......
If this is for instant coffee then a kettle with an 85C thermostat* may save some energy - though the payback time might be too long ;)
*Our kettle has an 85C or 100C setting, I don't like my coffee made from boiling water and used to boil the kettle and wait for it to cool back down. I got the new kettle for convenience, the energy saving is a bonus ;)Lee
If its for coffee get one of those kettles that just heats the water on the fly. They come out just right for coffee but it isn't boiling so its no good for tea.
Well it's only recently (like in the last 50 years) that electric kettles have turned off automatically when they boil.
That is about one fifth of a kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hours costs, maybe, 14 pence. (Looked at a simple tariff online a moment ago. Could be a bit more or a bit less - but likely somewhere near there.)
You can boil the kettle for another sixteen coffees before you hit the dizzy heights of 15p cost.
You'd save money by not having twenty cups of coffee a day - but quite possibly the savings would be greater on the coffee, milk and sugar than the fuel.
I once worked with a tightwad who came in early to work to get the benefit of the early starters incentive of free coffee from the vending machine. Every morning he dispensed 7 or so cups of coffee and huddled them together on a corner of his desk to keep them warm. He only drank 2 or 3, the rest were for thermal mass.
I can't help feeling the concerns over less than a penny per boil are drifting in a similar direction.
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