Calculating Gas and Electricity Usage

[peetbee]

Wonder if you can help me out. Mrs Bee's sorting out her costings and we're trying to calculate how much gas and electricity is used in making a cake.
Does anyone know of a way of doing this? (we know how long a cake takes, but not how many units of electric/gas we get through)

Please help, my head hurts trying to understand it!

[GreenV8S]

Can't you just look at the gas meter while it's cooking?

[peetbee]

If all else fails it may come to that, (hob=gas, oven=electric so would have to remember to switch everythign off)

[pugwash4x4]

You could calculate this but i don't know how accurate you could be- you would need the specs of the cooker to give flow rate of the gas at certin gas marks, and the electricity required to heat the hob to certain heat mark. I don't hink you could work our how much actual energy you have used, whilst the formula for working out the heat given my one mol of propane is quite simple- working out how much actual heat you have used might be totally impossible.

The best way i can think of working it out is to work it out overnight. Turn the oven on at say 11pm just before you go to bed- turn off everything else which produces gas. Go and read the gas meter.

Leav the oven on over night, come back in the morning, turn oven off and take new meter reading. Divide the number of units by the number of hours you had the oven on, and you should get an accurate reading for units per hour. Your last bill will show the charge per unit.

Do the same with electricity then you could proportion the number of hours of heat to each type of cake.

Otherwise take a stab that it's about 10p as i don't think anyone would argue with that.

[peetbee]

I thikn we'll go for the turn everything else off option, but will wait until next cake is baked to not waste energy and all that (trying to convince MrsBee to bake a cake for me to eat as research now )

[deva link]

pugwash4x4 said:

You could calculate this but i don't know how accurate you could be- you would need the specs of the cooker to give flow rate of the gas at certin gas marks,

Once it's up to temperature then it (should) only use a small amount of gas to maintain the temp. Our electric oven hardly seems to click on at all once its reached the set temp.

In the grand scheme of things the energy to prepare and bake a cake must be negligible - where do you draw the line? Don't forget the kitchen light bulb consumption, and the wear and tear on the car when going to buy the ingredients. And washing her apron. You'll be saving slightly on heating bills while the ovens on, though.

Edited by deva link on Monday 30th October 10:55

[Carrera2]

This seems an odd topic for the business section....

Out of interest, have you taken into account the cost of wear & tear on the oven per cake made? Or the deprciation of the oven, or the fluctuations in flour costs from purchase to sale etc?

[simpo two]

If you decide that burning so much fossil fuel is environmentally unacceptable, you'll just have to eat all the ingredients raw...

'Let them eat ingredients'

[peetbee]

I didn't think it was an odd topic for the business section as it is a cake business, albeit one run from home.
In terms of going a bit too far, possibly true, but something we thought was worth costing out in terms of one of the 'ingredients' of the cake (you know like flour is )
If it's not a significant amount then that's fine.

Depreciation was not considered as I also use the oven to heat my pies up in and thought that was definitely going too far. If the cakes are only baked in daylight then we also save wear and tear on the kitchen lights (Ok, now I'm being a little )
I have no problem with burning fossil fuels either as long as the customer pays for them!

Thanks for your comments

[K1 CERB]

Not for one cake. For a batch, or 8 hours cooking thats doable.

K1 CERB