Basic Question - If an appliance uses 230w what does it mean?

Morn

Does it mean that it draws that an hour/minute/second?

Just trying to decide if a slow cooker I am after is worth it?

I understand that it will be cheaper than the oven in the short term, but it will be on all day whereas the oven will be on for a couple of hours max.

Any one??

amcluesent

>Does it mean that it draws that an hour/minute/second?<

A Watt measures a rate of energy conversion, defined as one joule of energy per second.

(Yeah, I did A-level physics)

KimYeovil

1000W in a kW. Electricity is charged in kWh. A 1000W device on for 1 hour will cost 1 unit. A 230W device for 1 hour will cost just under a quarter of a unit.

(Say 14p per unit.
230W is ( 230 / 1000 ) kW or 0.23kW. Running that for one hour costs (0.23 x 14p) or 3.22p per hour. So that's under 20p for a six hour casserole.)

Of course, it may be even less than that since there may be thermostats and times when less or no power is being drawn.

1carminestocky

If you are looking to make your oven virtually redundant, Morn, consider purchasing a Remoska. By no means the very last word in cheapness :eek: , granted, but we haven't used our leccy guzzling oven once since we got one.

Anything you can do in an oven you can do in a Remoska and the fuel saving will be impressive to say the least. We have the Grand (large one) and I've had it monitored with my Maplin plug-in usgae meter for the last 12 days. Total cost of leccy used? £1.06! Been used every day to make the main meal and very often twice (our kids use it to cook pizzas in etc). Total annual running costs should be approx £33. Recommended. There's a HUGE thread about it here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=10314&highlight=remoska

Magentasue

KimYeovil wrote: »

Of course, it may be even less than that since there may be thermostats and times when less or no power is being drawn.

This has been asked before and I'm pretty sure the thermostat factor mentioned by Kim means that you can't make an accurate calculation. It will depend on how the cooker is made/insulated how often the thermostat cuts in. So different 230watt models could have different running costs as I understand it. That said, the difference is unlikely to be significant so you might as well go for the one that you prefer.

1carminestocky

Magentasue wrote: »

This has been asked before and I'm pretty sure the thermostat factor mentioned by Kim means that you can't make an accurate calculation. It will depend on how the cooker is made/insulated how often the thermostat cuts in. So different 230watt models could have different running costs as I understand it. That said, the difference is unlikely to be significant so you might as well go for the one that you prefer.

Agreed. The only way to see if it will be for you is to buy it and check its usage with a plug-in monitor over an 8 hour or so period. Only problem with this approach is that if it's too expensive to run you've already bought it. Hmmmm....back to the drawing board with this theory, I think.:o One of things I love about the Remoska is, perversely, that it DOESN'T have a thermostat so usage is VERY easy to calculate! My Grand is rated at 650w and I pay 10p per kwh (insisting on old Click 5 rates until the switch to SP is competed!) so it costs us 6.5p per hour to run.