this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Original question and text by @[email protected]

One example is bread. I was baking bread the other day, and obviously the cost of the ingredients I put in the loaf are less than the cost of buying a loaf at the supermarket, but that doesn't include the cost of putting the oven on.

Or dry beans vs canned beans; does the cost of boiling the beans actually bring the cost up to be equivalent to canned beans?

I know that everyone's energy costs are different so it's not possible for someone to do the calculations for you, but I've never bothered to do them for my own case because bills I get from the energy company just tell me how much I owe them for the month, not "you put the oven on for 30 minutes on the 17th of June and that cost you X". It sounds like a headache to try calculate how much I pay for energy per meal. But if someone else has done that calculation for themselves I'd be interested to read it and see how it works out. My intuition is that, in general, it's cheaper to make things yourself (e.g. bread or beans like above), but I couldn't say that for sure without calculating, which as I said seems like it would be a pain in the ass.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago

Let's say you use your stove for 30 minutes. A quick Google search shows 1 kilowatt per small burner (per hour) is used for an average stovetop. It's about 16 cents per kilowatt hour where I am. Mathing that brings it to 8 cents per 30 minutes.

Another factor you have to keep in mind is the amount of time you have to take out of your day to prepare it.