Oven energy consumption

[GhostCastle]

Hope someone can explain this for me. My oven is 5500 watts, so I bought an air fryer thinking it would save energy. Hard to tell how much energy the Ninja is saving us because we have sola panels. I’m starting to worry it could be costing quite a lot to run. I lost my oven manual, so I searched online for it’s energy consumption and found something that says it uses 0.85kwh energy (forced convection) with 5500 watt power connected load. Please can someone explain this to me? Starting to think buying an air fryer was a mistake.

I don't know, @GhostCastle - I think my oven must use a LOT, my monthly bill (small 3 bed town house) was £161. £13 of that was gas.. my oven is electric. Tend to think it's that, plus washer & dishwasher, (oh & two fridge freezers - that's another story!) that are inflating my bills..

Which model is it?

Dh worked out that our Tefal airfryer uses half the amount of electricity to run compared to the oven and it cooks in half the time.

I very much doubt that any airfryer uses the same as an oven as they're much smaller and cook more efficiently.

A typical electric fan oven is 3000 watts, so if that's on for an hour, it uses 3kwh. My top oven is smaller but not fan, that uses 2.5kwh.

Say you've got a Ninja Foodie 9 in 1 6L, the energy rating is 1460w. So an hour is 1.46kwh.

A benefit of air fryers is they cook food quicker, though, so something taking an hour in the oven (3kwh) might take 30 minutes in the air fryer (1.46 x 0.5 = 0.73khw).

Just realised the numbers you gave are for the oven. That sounds like the fan uses 0.85kwh to run and that if both top and main ovens were running it would draw 5500w - that's more than a standard plug socket can handle which is why ovens have a separate connection.

Microwaves and air fryers use a lot less energy than an oven or hob. My microwave is only 800w for example.

@WhatsitWiggle it’s a Smeg double oven DUSC36X. The small oven is 2.8KW & main oven 5.6kW on the label inside the door. Just worried about the energy consumption 0.85kWh forced convection bit I read online. Forced convection because it’s a fan oven. I’ve been telling DH that the Ninja will help with our energy bills. Worried I’ve got it wrong!😬

@GhostCastle your Ninja will be way less than your oven.

Every hour you run your main fan oven is using 5.6kwh.

Every hour you run your Ninja is using around 1.5kwh (depends on your model).

If you have a microwave and it's a 900w model, every hour you run that uses 0.9kwh.

Generally though, things take longer to cook in an oven than an air fryer or a microwave. So not only does the oven use more per kwh, it also runs for longer.

Does that make sense?

The forced convection is just to run the fan, not to do any heating. My oven is neff and after I switch it off the fan runs for another 20 minutes!

Remember the oven doesn’t use its power rating for the full hour, only when the heating element is on.

Let’s say you set it to 160c, it takes six minutes to warm up, then the thermostat turns the heating element off until the temperature starts to drop. Based on my lower power oven the element is then only on a quarter of the time for the rest of the hour. As such in one hours use your oven actually uses the heating element for eighteen minutes, plus whatever the light and fan use.

Im quite sceptical that an air fryer would ever pay for itself, especially once amortising the depreciation of part of a kitchen installation made redundant.

It's all about the time it takes to cook. An oven takes longer,an air fryer about half and a microwave even less time to cook the same thing.
I have a tiny kitchen so no room for an airfryer so I only use the oven when I have a decent amount to do at the same time so batch cooking at the same time as a roast or pastry dish.My stove top cooking repertoire is greatly increased as is my ,1 pot cookery!

@WhatsitWiggle that makes sense, thanks. So the 0.85kWH is just for the fan when the oven is on for an hour?

Thanks @Asdf12345. I hear our oven click on every so often when the temp in the oven has dropped. I’d love to know exactly how much energy it uses in total.