How much energy does the multicooker consume, is it profitable to use it?

Do you dream to buy a slow cooker to save yourself from unnecessary trouble in the kitchen with the constant addition of ingredients to the pan and stirring? But the fear that the appearance of such a kitchen assistant will dramatically increase electricity costs stops you from acquiring? Let's see how much light a similar technique can wind on a meter.

Average power consumption

Choosing a multicooker in a store, we first of all look at the functions that it is capable of performing. The number of programs can range from 5-14 positions:

• yogurt;
• meat;
• pilaf;
• rice
• legumes;
• paste;
• pizza;
• porridge;
• soup / borsch / ear;
• dough;
• cottage cheese;
• jam;
• bakery products;
• own recipe.

We can also ask about the modes:

• steaming;
• warming up;
• quenching;
• frying.

But almost never look at such an indicator as power, and it is precisely from what modes our future has the kitchen assistant directly depends on how many kilowatts of electricity, and therefore the costs from the family budget, will be drawn by our slow cooker.

Miracle units have different power levels - mainly from 500 W to 1100 W, so the electric meter will be wound in different ways. Very rarely you can find crock-pots with power 490 W or 1.5 kW. True, not only this multicooker characteristic affects power consumption, but also other parameters:

• design features;
• number of available programs;
• selected mode (temperature and program);
• bowl volume.

Advice! Looking at the instruction manual, you must definitely ask how much your kitchen assistant will consume electricity per hour.

It would seem simpler: choose a slow cooker with less power and pay less for the light. But not so simple! Yes, a slow cooker with more power, on the one hand, will consume more energy, but on the other, it will cook for a shorter period of time, and as a result, the electricity consumption will be lower than in a device with less power, but longer work.

There is only one way out of this situation: choose a slow cooker with average indicators of 600-800 W - and you will not lose.

Slow Cooker Options That Affect Consumption

Electricity consumption also depends on the volume of the multicooker bowl - 3, 4 or 5 l. Two multicookers of equal power with different bowls will pull a different number of kilowatts, so that for a small family it is not advisable to choose a bowl of a large volume and pay extra money for light.

Please note that a slow cooker with a 3-liter bowl will use about 2 times less energy than with a 5-liter one. On average, a 3-liter will consume 400–700 watts in one hour of operation, while in a 5-liter this figure will be 650–1000 watts per hour.

How to calculate power consumption

So, you looked at the instructions and found out the power of the multicooker. But how to calculate how much real light it will pull? If you have a unit with a power of 1000 watts, then, in theory, a multicooker should use up 1 kW of electricity per hour of operation. If you use it twice a day for an hour, it will burn 2 kW per day. Multiply this figure by the tariff of your region and find out how much money you have to pay for using a kitchen assistant. This is theoretically, but in practice there will be completely different numbers, because such a quantity of electricity the multicooker uses only in the heating mode, and then just maintains the desired temperature. Electricity consumption in this mode is 15–25% of the maximum power. So the actual power consumption will be 250 watts per hour for a multicooker with a capacity of 1 kW or, for example, 200 watts for a power of 800 watts.

Having estimated how many times a day or a week you will use a multicooker, you can calculate how many kW will be added to the meter per month. If you turn on an apparatus with a power of 1 kW every day for an hour, then in a month it will wind up 7.5 kW of light in addition to your energy consumption.

This indicator may seem too large to you, but it is much lower compared to the consumption of light by an electric stove. Since using an electric stove or oven will cost 2.5 times more. A microwave with an electric kettle also consumes a lot more electricity.

Using a slow cooker, you will free yourself a lot of free time, because it will be enough only to lay down the necessary products, set the mode and return to the kitchen when lunch is completely ready.

Energy saving tips

Although the crock-pot, as you already understood, doesn’t take too much energy, for the most economical we want to give some tips on how you can reduce the energy consumption of this kitchen machine:

• choose models where cooking is done under pressure;
• choose the program with the highest automatic mode;
• choose the mode of "quenching" or "languishing";
• do not use the “heating” mode after cooking;
• refuse baking in the electric oven by switching to baking in a slow cooker.

Knowing your appetites and cooking opportunities at home, now you can easily calculate how much electricity you will have to spend on using a slow cooker. So it’s easy to decide whether such an assistant is needed in the kitchen, or whether you will continue to scum on an electric or gas stove, spending much more energy and energy for cooking dinner.