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I'm lucky enough to still be in a price fix until September 2023 so only pay £65 a month for gas and electricity combined with Sainsburys and I'm in credit. I have solar panels too so get around £400 a year for them from good energy. God knows how much my energy bills will be when my price fix ends

 

I am wondering how to save some energy and I understand a kettle uses a lot.
Since I am always making cups of tea and coffee (they get me through the day !) and you have to fill the kettle above the element therefore a lot of water is boiled but then wasted, would it be cheaper for me to boil the water in the microwave ??
I would only need to boil the exact amount I need for one cup, but it seems to take a long time, so does anyone know if this would be cheaper than boiling the kettle ...

 

We always do individual cups in a microwave. Only takes a minute or so depending on how hot you want it. Actually I have a Thermos of tea made each morning.

 

I always use the microwave for one cup but in the mornings I make a pot of tea.
My microwave is 1000 watts at full power and it does a mug in 90 sec .
Also got a kettle that doesn't have the visible element in the bottom.
Kettles are pretty cheap these days if you're not fussy what it looks like.

 

We don't boil keetle as we have rayburn but we still put boiling water into a thermos for us to use through out the day and night

 

Thanks for all replies, I don't know the power of my microwave, it's new and everything new is complicated to me, but I think I'll use the microwave to make tea/coffee from now on.

I don't see the point in boiling a flask full of water, it takes the same amount of electricity to warm it in one go as it does to warm it at different times. I usually fill a flask if there's a storm in case there's a power cut.

I never buy tea when I'm out because I like it very week, I can make 3 cups of tea from a 'one cup' tea bag although I sometimes use a fresh one anyway.

 

@Michael Hewett

We use one of these Asda kettles which has a clear 1 cup marking and its often used at that level.
It does not have an exposed curly element so no problem with small amounts, its been working well for a couple of years.

If you have a gas hob they say its cheaper to boil water on that vs electric but what price convenience for a cuppa ! ?

 

This is something that I can't seem to get to the bottom of, how much heat you actually get from say £1of gas and £1s worth of electric.
I know scientifically there will be lots of variables involved but 30 or 40 years ago it was always gas that was cheapest to heat your house.
I'm beginning to wonder if electricity might be starting to become the cheaper of the two.
If not, bearing in mind how much renewables are quoted, why not?

 

Well @pete, I was only going on what I had read recently on various web sites, think one was an energy supplier.

However as we have a plug in power meter, we did a simple test with our 3kw kettle.
With the kettle cold and filled with a typical cup of 230ml of cold tap water, the power meter recorded just under 0.04kwh. or another way it takes 1Kwh to heat 25 separate cups.
So with 1kwh typically costing 28p on the standard variable tariff means it cost 28p / 25 or 1.23p per cup.

As for green /renewables - pass ?

How much for gas ? well not as easy to measure on a small scale.

All these Energy things are such minefield eg they say electric cars are best - well NCAP tends to cast doubt on that if you look at the wider picture.
Official Green NCAP website - How green is your car?

 

Ooops, thanks at @JWK, don't know how I picked up the wrong price there, have amended the post accordingly.

Think gas hob pan heating is about half as cheap, mainly because its only about 50% efficient with so much of its heat being lost into the room.