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LP Gas vs. Electric

Today I discovered something truly amazing.

It all started with a notice I got from the LP gas company last week. It said that gas prices will rise by 30 yen per cubic meter. That got me to thinking about ways I could reduce gas use. I could only come up with two things that I use gas for, though:

1) hot water (for the bath, etc.)
2) cooking

So starting this week, I have been taking completely cold showers without any bath to accompany them. That saves on heating water.

The other one, cooking, was more difficult. I decided that if I ever need to boil water, I would first heat it in my denki pot to 98 degrees before moving it to the gas stove. I tried to come up with ways to use one pot to accomplish two things simultaneously. I even thought for a while how to use my rice cooker for cooking more than just rice.

But then today, it hit me.

Why not figure out how much it actually costs to use gas for cooking?

After some calculations, I realized that depending on which burner I use, it costs either 122.88 yen or 216.83 yen per hour to have the burner running at full speed.

Although I don't actually cook that way, it gave me something to use to compare to electric stovetops.

I had heard for some time that electric is cheaper to use than LP gas, but I always just took that on faith and never bothered to do the math for myself until today.

For comparison purposes, I decided to figure out how much a 1400W burner would cost at similar conditions my calculation of gas burners. The result was a mere 30.268 yen per hour running at top speed.

Let's compare:

Gas: 122.88~216.83 yen per hour
Electric: 30.268 yen per hour

I think I'm switching to electric!

Comments

Awesome, man. Yeah, it sounds like that's the thing to do. One's gotta admire the extent to which you're working to cut down. You're getting to me, like, some kind of pro or something!

(Continue training! Yes, train! Train! 走ってゆく, Mikawa Ossan!)
 
I read somewhere that one trick to cutting down costs is to increase the efficiency of the money you use. Switching from gas to electric for cooking is one such method, but only if the cost of buying an electric burner is cheap enough that you can recoup your cost in a reasonable time.

I found a 1400W burner for just under 10,000 today, so I figure that in about a year it'll pay for itself. That's not bad!
 
We use gas for cooking and for our hot water, however our electric bill is around 35,000 per month during the summer because of the increased use of our a/c's. Our gas bill is roughly 5,000 per month.

Dont have to worry about "cold" showers either as the tank on the house gets heated by the sun.

I guess it depends where one lives here. The IC ranges are not cheap either. The cheapest one with 3 burners that I saw at BEST and Yamada were about 90,000.
 
Wow. My electric bill last month was 3,750 yen. I don't remember off-hand what my gas bill was, but I always budget 5,000 yen for it.

I actually bought an IC range yesterday after having done my calculations. I bought only a single burner, and it cost 9980 yen after tax. Luckily, I only really need the one burner, so that really helps!

KirinMan, how many ACs do you run at a time in your house? I know that Okinawa gets hot, but 35,000 yen a month for electricity seems outrageous to me!
 

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Mikawa Ossan
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