Boiling a Kettle, Gas vs. Electricity

bsmallwo · 20 May 2006 at 2:32PM

Hiya - which is cheaper, boiling a kettle with gas, or with electricity? And by how much?

Avoiding all the variables like re-boiling an electric kettle (that has auto switch off).... - plus, using the correct size hob on the gas cooker etc.....

I know this depends on costs of gas vs. electric, but there must be some common price...

Sorry if this has been discussed before - I looked but couldn't find anything.

tomstickland · 20 May 2006 at 2:34PM

I'll work it out later.
Essentially, the amount of energy required can be deduced for a known mass of water. Allowing for efficiencies of the two methods, then the total units of gas or electric can be estimated, hence allowing the total cost to be found. Will be interesting.
Actually, which is cheaper can be estimated without even knowing how much energy is needed to boil x litres of water - the relative cost will be determined just from efficiences and unit costs.

g0ose · 21 May 2006 at 10:12AM

My day rate electricity prices are about 4x higher per Kwh than for gas. I would expect the efficiency to be high for the electric kettle due to the plastic housing been a good insulator, probably >95%. However my hob kettle would still only have to be a meager 25% efficient to roughly equal it based on cost. I would guess that the hob kettle is a fair bit more than 25% efficient, which is why I have now stopped using the electric kettle.

I also think using the gas hob would be better for the environment.

1) Lower demand on national grid at peak times like around 7.45pm.

2) electricity generation has a high CO2 cost

3) using less electricity helps reduce the need for building nuclear power stations.

A tip I picked up the other week was using the microwave to boil the water/milk in the mug. Takes about 2.5 mins on my 850w microwave. Useful when I'm only making a single brew. Dunno how efficient a microwave is but might work out been cheaper than the kettle due to the smaller volume of liquid been heated.

Ken68 · 21 May 2006 at 1:36PM

..................and milk takes 1minute 40 seconds.

malcolmwilliamson · 21 May 2006 at 9:07PM

This topic was discussed on this thread http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=183998
a few weeks ago.

Wig · 24 May 2006 at 2:10PM

I find it annoying when people boil a litre of water and they only need 330ml

so that's one point made. On the issue at hand, I would say it is cheaper to use gas, that's what I've always thought and as aresult I only use the electric kettle as a water jug, it almost never gets switched on.

To test it you would have to boil a litre using both methods and note the amount of gas & electric used by watching the meters (or in the case of electricity you could just time in seconds and work it out using the power rating of the kettle.). You may have to boil ten litres because the meter may not move enough to tell

manxman104 · 27 May 2006 at 1:22AM

Hi

I just bought an ECO Kettle, you can boil between 1 cup and 8 cups, depending on what you need.

http://www.shopeco.co.uk/index.asp?function=DISPLAYPRODUCT&productid=311

Keith H

Ganyam · 27 May 2006 at 1:45AM

Oh,come on.............. stick it on the coal fire

Boiling a Kettle, Gas vs. Electricity

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