Finding the chase and cutting to it

If, like us, you are putting off having food for as long as possible today, due to overeating yesterday: I don’t blame you.

But as I sit quietly with my family, I wondered how much energy did we use yesterday, catering for a large number of people and being in each other’s company all day? Not our calories or political energy but the draw on the national power grid…

It was a cold Christmas in the East of England. But almost all businesses and offices are closed. People come together, running their houses cooler, while spending time with the people cooking the feast. Yes, cooking a turkey or other roasts (even nut ones) takes power, but instead of people sitting in their houses individually cooking small meals on their ovens, they come together and a modern, insulated oven is amazing once up to temperature. We only used the hob for a couple of things.

We had family stay over, so water consumption was up, rooms that are normally not used for sleeping are drummed into use. Washing machines will be cycled for the extra laundry… But on the day, we mostly sat in the same rooms – a person in a room raises the temperature of a room by 1°C, so again, once a room is up to temperature, maintaining a cozy room is much easier.

The main dinner itself was mostly done in the warm oven. We roasted almost everything, reusing the warmth. I even did the plates on the microwave while I baked some cauliflower cheese. Cooking the roux for the cauliflower in the hob took seconds and very little power.

We are not alone in this, demand for power is typically 30% less than a typical day, though most of that power is used between 10:30 and 15:30 in the afternoon – a normal working day, the peak usage is between 16:00 and 20:00. In 2018, peak demand was 36.6W at 13:30!

Of course, over the intervening six years, many things have changed. Electric and gas ovens coming off production lines thanks to the Energy Related Products legislation (aka ErP). This states the energy use per product and ovens are a major consumer in the kitchen. Ours has an energy efficiency rating A and B for the different ovens, mostly because the top oven doesn’t have a fan, so only gains a B rating…

Feeding the hoard, I used all three ovens – the Neff’s top and bottom and our Panasonic’s combination microwave. I did not preheat unnecessarily.

I also got things out of the fridge early. Vegetables in particular cook quicker if you are only raising the temperature from 19°C rather than 0°C – 4°C. Having accidentally bought a huge amount of sprouts, defrosting the sprouts to stop them going off meant that they only needed 5 minutes or so blanching to be really tasty.

Of course, we cooked too much food. When you have that many options, halve the quantities so everyone can have something but there isn’t took much left over.

In fact, we had the Christmas Pudding for tea at 18:00, which was cooked in the microwave (steam for an hour over boiling water or 90 seconds in the microwave, and stand for a minute before serving?).

So, how much did you use?

Oh, sorry, 36.6kWh, with only 0.8kWh of that coming from solar and the battery. At £0.24 per kWh, that’s Our average for that of kind of weather day is 45kWh, Sunday lunch cooking, etc.

Mostly due to people being in the same rooms.

We have four meals off the remainder of the turkey, only one for the stuffing and veggies (bubble and squeak for the veggies and we fry up the chestnut and sausage meat stuffing to go with it).

We keep prezzies to a minimum, so not much angst about waste.

Hope you have a green and happy new year.