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how much in electricity $$??

wvictor

Does anyone knows how much cost per hour to run one of these sous vide machines? I know they say in the tag 1000W but I find hard to believe that 1000W are needed to circulate and keep water at 60C .....

Thanks

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Chris_Young_80640

Hard to quote exact numbers because it depends on how well insulated your cooking vessel is, but in general it requires very little power to maintain temperature—tens of watts, not hundreds or more.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Victor, I have the Sous Vide Supreme and, IIRC, they say the operating cost is about the same as a 60W light bulb. Hope that helps.

Chris_Young_80640

Keep in mind that it does take a lot of power to bring the water up to temperature. So your unit might pull 1200+ watts during the heat up period.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Chris, that's a good point. I was thinking of operating cost while just maintaining the temp.

John_Paul_Khoury_17236

Can I make a comment about the running water method? It seems like an interesting exercise but talk about energy and water waste- I can't see where this would work into the philosophy of a sustainable approach. I'm assuming it was for the sake of education correct?

John_Paul_Khoury_17236

Since oil takes less energy to bring up to temp could you do a reusable oil bath instead- like a deep fryer but solely to insert bags into? Never done it but just came to me- any comments or experiments into this area?

Samuel_68313

If I remember rightly oil is not as efficient at heating as water (water is quite exceptional at transferring heat), so if you did that I suspect you'd have to leave everything in there for a lot longer to get it upto temperature. So any money saved heating will be lost in the longer cooking times. Not to mention that oil is far more expensive to begin with.

There is an experiment you can do to show how good water is at transferring heat, I forget exactly what temp is best to use but basically you bring a pot of oil to 75c and a pot of water to 75c. You can leave your finger in the oil for a good while before it starts to burn but the water will start to burn you almost immediately.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I think the fat will cause the circulation to have issues as well...

Samuel_68313

If saving energy is a huge concern then just run a few tests finding quickest and most efficient way to bring water up to temp and then dump it into the vessel. Might be marginally more efficient if you can bring the water up to desired temperature by using a large pot on a stove with a thermometer in it before pouring it into whatever SV setup you have.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

The stove consumes a pretty hefty amount of electricity too.

I usually just start with the water heat we have from the heater - full blast it is about 57C.

DiggingDogFarm_65362

Out of curiosity I performed an experiment 2 weeks ago with the FMM, which is allegedly 1500W.

It took it exactly 53 minutes to ramp-up a little bit over 14 liters of water from 20 C to 90 C....that's in an uncovered and uninsulated 22 liter Cambro-style polycarbonate container filled to the 15 liter line to compensate for the volume of the FMM and a tiny amount of evaporation.

Electric here is .0828 per KWH

Cost of the above ramp up just 10.6 cents.

Obviously maintaining temp costs much less per hour.....after ramp up I use 4 layers bubble wrap inside a gallon zip bag for insulation.

~Martin

Tim_Sutherland_52834

This French guy did an experiment of an 8hr cook at 60°C. Including preheat he calculated he used 2.05KWh. Based on DiggingDogFarm electrical cost, he would have change from $0.17.

High_Steaks_18295

I looked into this when I was doing some financial modelling for a business plan that I was working on. In that regards, I asked the same question as you to Polyscience. They gave me the following response, based on the Polyscience Chef model:mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">

"Our Sous Vide Professional CHEF

Series is rated with a maximum fluid handling volume of 30 liters. "Times New Roman"">

mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> During initial heat up, when the

unit is simply ramping up to temperature, the heater is on at full power. The

unit will consume about 1.006 kW/h during this stage, which should take

approximately 60 minutes using your example temperature (56c). This step

can be greatly shortened by starting with hot tap water. "Times New Roman"">

mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> Once desired temperature is

achieved, the unit goes into a much lower power state to control temperature,

using about 15-20% of the maximum power. This equates to a maximum of about

0.21 kW/h of power consumption when at the maximum cooking

temperature (85°C) Power consumption decreases at lower cooking temperatures; I

would estimate 10-15% at 56°C or 0.16 kW/h at 56°C. Other variables

such as ambient temperature, the use of a lid, insulation, etc will cause

additional variance in these values."font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">

Based on the electricity prices in the UK at the time I checked, to heat a full 30L tank of water costs 0.18 GBP, and keeping the tank warm costs 0.036 GBP per hour. In other words, the electriity costs are negligible.