Do you think a sous vide is cost effective?

If  you consider taking an inexpensive cut of meat and making in tender and delicious...   It's very much worth it...  

The ANOVA sous-vide is 800 watts...  at 10 cents a KWH, that cost is 8 cents per hour if it runs continuous...  In an insulated container, the run time is probably 25-50%...   so, it's 2-4 cents per hour... 

The average electric oven pulls 4,000 watts....  40 cents per hour...  if running continuously....   

Propane, in in my area, costs 2X's electricity...   

Personally, I prefer tender, delicious food to tough and chewy, let's not have that again food... even if it does cost less than cooking it in the oven...

But that's my opinion....

Place the sous-vide unit in an insulated ice chest...   that will be a huge cost savings to you..  maybe as much as 75%....  Try a seasoned chuck steak...  try pork belly....  try beef cheeks (which are awesome flavor)....    ox tail....   Sous-vide shines on tough cuts of meat that are inexpensive..    Premium, expensive cuts of meat, not so much....

I don't think they use much electricity once they are up to temp, but I have no data to support that.  You could get an electric consumption meter of some sort...I did a search and found several inexpensive options on amazon. That would tell you your real usage and give you some real data to back up any claims either way.  Another way to minimize electricity would be to do a cooler set up.  Drill a hole in the top of a cooler and cook it that way.  Very well insulated.  I haven't built the insulated cooler set up for mine yet, but I plan on it.  For short cooks of only a couple hours I will still use a pot on the counter.  But, for longer cooks such as those short ribs, I'd definitely use an insulated cooler with lid.

The ultimate way to know how much electricity gets used is to use a Kil-A-Watt meter, as already advised. You need to get a model which has the "integrating" feature. This lets you get the total electricity usage over a period of time for a device that turns on and off (as opposed to being continuously on). This includes both your refrigerator and your sous vide machine. Here is the one I have:

P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor

It has the integrating feature.

Remember that total electricity usage is watts multiplied by the time a device is on. So, for example, a microwave oven uses a lot of power, typically 800-1200 watts, but it is only on for thirty seconds at a time. Therefore it consumes very little power, and you don't have to worry about it costing a lot of money to operate. At the other end of the scale, if you have an old incandescent light bulb in your front porch light, and it is 75 watts, that isn't much power, but if it is on all night, you multiply 0.075 killowatts (75 watts converted to killowatts) by 10 (hours per night), you get 0.75 killowatt-hours each day which, around here, will cost about $0.20 a day, or $6 per month, or $72 each year. By contrast, if you run your 1000 watt microwave four times a day for thirty seconds each, that is only two minutes which is 1/30 of an hour. 1 killowatt  * (1/30) = 0.03 killowatt-hours which is one penny.

Your sous vide machine, once up to temperature, is probably cycling on and off a lot. I have no idea what the duty cycle (ratio of on to off) might be, but it is probably on only about 1/4 of the time. The Kill-A-Watt meter will tell you exactly. I am guessing that it is actually pretty efficient compared to something like a conventional oven which has to supply heat to a much larger area, at a much, much higher temperature.

If you are really interested in knowing how much power everything consumes so that you can focus on the big power users and either modify their usage or replace them, then the Kill-A-Watt meter is an essential tool. The one I linked to also lets you input your cost per killowatt-hour (you get this directly from your power bill), and it will do all these computations for you. Just plug your sous vide machine into the meter, enter the cost information, start the meter, and than start your cook. At the end, it will tell you exactly how much it cost to cook dinner.

Extra Useless Information

I have measured every single plug-in item in this house (except for lights, which are easy to understand without a meter), and have a spreadsheet that gives me all this information. I found a LOT of surprises. For instance, my furnace controllers (one for the upstairs, one for downstairs) consumes 9 watts of power all the time!! I live near the coast in California, and we don't need heat for six months out of the year, and I don't have air conditioning. Therefore, by leaving both controllers plugged in during the six months of no heating, I was wasting:

0.009 x 24 x 365 = 79 killowatt hours / year

That's how much energy each controller used. Since I have two of them, the total is double that, but since I am now turning them both off for half of the year, it is half of that total, and therefore is the same number shown: 79 killowatt hours each year. At our rate of $0.30/killowatt hours (our rates are really high) I save almost $25 each year simply by unplugging the furnace when not needed.

Not earth shattering, but if you saw a $20 bill lying next to a $5 bill on the sidewalk, you'd think it was a pretty good day when you picked them up.

@johnmeyer  Thanks for the detailed reply...very interesting!

Nate.