What does it cost to run your electric smoker

[jted]

During a recent conversation with my other half, we discussed how much it cost to run my MES 30 . So I set out to do the math

Here it is.

Some of the things you need to know before you start are .What size is your heating element? In my case it is 800 watts.

Next we need to turn that into amps. Real easy. watts divided by the house hold voltage . Most homes have a 120 volt service to their receptical. That is what your element likes. 800/120=6.6 amps now you have the amps your half way done.

Now multiply the amps 6.6 X the voltage 120 = 792 divided by 1000 and you get the KW or kilowatts it's 0.792

Now that you have the KW you can find the KWH (kilowatt hours) That is important because that is how your electric bill is figured

KWH=KW times the number of hours of your smoke

So it's 0.792 X the hours so in this case it is 18 hours or 14.256 KWH. The power companies charge you about half of your bill for the electricity KWH used but by the time you are charged for the federal,state and power companies charges it is about double. So what I did was to get my total number of KWH's charged and divided it by my total bill and that gave me the cost per KWH charged. It was about .1182 per KWH charged so my smoke cost was

14.256 KWH multiplied by the cost of each KWH charged by the power company.1182 times the KWH”14.256 or 1.71 per 18 hour smoke. At one time a long time ago this was second nature to me but it has been a long time since I went to apprentice school I am now 65. If someone else checks my math and formulas and I made a error please let me know. Jted

 

[frankusb]

You only need to use the 800W element size. No need to divide by the voltage and then multiply by the voltage, this just introduces rounding error.

800W/1000 * .1182 * number of hours gives you your worst case number. Your actual number will always be less than that unless your element is on the entire time which I doubt it is.

 

[tallbm]

I didn't check the math bout it sounds good to me.
I also love the fact of not having to babysit a good electric smoker.
Throw in an AMNPS and it is really set and forget :)

 

[daveomak]

My MES 30 heating element is on continuously... usually around 3-400 watts... I run it on a dimmer...
Soooo, at $0.07 kwh, that's about .07 X .350kw = $0.025 per hour... 18 hours... about 44 cents for 18 hours..

 

[uncle eddie]

Enjoyed this post. Always wanted to know what the cost was as compared to a propane smoker. The convenience of electric is still to good to pass up - especially with the introduction of the AMNPS.

Also - when I set my MES40 at 225F - I think my element is on about 40 percent of the time. When I set it at 275F, I would guess it is probably closer to being on 60 percent of the time.

 

[jted]

Hi, I used the 800 watt figure a for 18 hours as frankusb called it a worse case scenario. My MES 30 a 20070910 is set up with a Auber PID. I can see by the power light that comes on when it heats. It is not on much over 50% but I did not use my P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor. it works great and I will use use it to find the actual KWH used on a winter smoke in the next few days. Jted

 

[dward51]

The Kill-a-watt would be the way to measure usage. My MES has a 1,500 watt element, but is under a PID controller with SSR so it's only being pulsed about 10% of the time once at temp. It would be almost impossible to measure that accurately without a device like the kill-a-watt. I just need to remember when I put mine as I have not used it since I sold the travel trailer. I used to dry camp a lot and usage matters a lot in dry camping.

I think the kill-a-watt readings will be very interesting.

 

[cmayna]

Maybe I should pull out my Kill-a-watt and see what is says.

 

[tallbm]

With my HeaterMeter, it actually records when the on/off electrical pulses are occurring and technically for how long.

Long story short, if the Fan Output Percentage is at 25% or higher output then my MES is pulling full electrical current.
The HeaterMeter was designed to control a blower fan on a charcoal pit at 0-100% fan blowing ability. I have an electrical MES so it is either On or Off when it comes to pulling electricity to the heating element.

In the image below you can see the light blue spikes and dips, these indicate the Fan Output Percentage.
When a light blue spike/dip or valley is at the 25% mark or higher then electricity is being pulled by the MES.
When under 25% no electricity is being pulled.

The left hand side of the graph has 0 to 100 indicating the Fan Output Percentage.
As you can see There aren't many dips below 25% and they aren't for very long.

This recorded cook shows that I'm probably pulling electricity for most of my cook at a set temp of 255F for most of the smoke (see the red line for the set temp).

This was probably overkill but recorded results may give someone a better understanding of how the MES works on a well calibrated PID and the electrical cost of just the MES heating element alone.

To get the full cost I would need to determine the cost of my HeaterMeter running during that period and add it on to what my MES is costing, but that wouldn't be so hard to do... if I wanted to get really accurate with the cost calculation. Since we are talking such low numbers I think an estimation of like "less than $2" is good enough for me :D