A new electric cooker is cheaper than a 13kg of gas!

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

20 March 2022

Last week, we saw that it is cheaper to cook with electricity than with gas. The difference is significant: gas is 58 per cent more expensive than electricity. The next obvious question is whether it would be worth changing from the costly one to the cheaper one.

That decision depends on how long it takes to recover the cost of buying a new cooker. I visited a few shops recently and found that most 2-coil electric cookers go for between Sh1,500 and Sh3,000. There are a few costing over Sh5,000, but I will work with the majority, that is, an average price of Sh2,250.

This is interesting: the price of a new 2-coil electric cooker is less than that of 13kg of cooking gas! In other words, you can buy a new cooker instead of a Sh3,300 cylinder of gas – and save Sh1,000 instantly!

Furthermore, from that moment onwards, you will be spending 58 per cent less on cooking energy – about half the cost of gas. In the life-time of a 13-kg cylinder, you will spend about Sh2,100 on electric cooking instead of Sh3,300 on gas. This is a Sh1,200 saving every gas-cylinder. The question is: how long does the cylinder last?

In my house, the cylinder lasts about 6 weeks. Thus, I can save Sh1,200 every month-and-a-half. That is Sh800 per month. So, it would take me just three months to recover the full cost of the electric cooker! What are we waiting for? Let’s all switch to electric cooking.

Still, there is the question of reliability. What do you do if the power goes off when you have food on the cooker? As illustrated last week, this rarely happens. But, to be on the safe side, you may want to keep a gas cylinder for such emergencies.

Having said that, I remember what a friend told me recently. He bought a stand-by generator for his house in 2019 and filled it with Sh2,000 worth of petrol. Over the last three years, he has not added any more fuel. Still, it has about half the tank remaining in the tank. He says that most of the fuel has gone to the weekly test-runs that he does to keep all moving parts in good working order!

Finally, a word of advice: electric cookers work best with pans (sufurias) that have a flat base that stays in constant contact with the entire length of the heating coil. This reduces heat losses greatly and improves the speed of cooking.