Slow Cook Your Way Out Of A Drought-Stricken Electricity Bill
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01.10.08
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is proposing a rate increase due to extreme drought having reduced their ability to ramp up hydroelectric generators in time for customers to turn on the bright kitchen lights and cook dinner - after 4:00PM.
Only 6 percent of TVA energy comes from hydroelectric, and TVA just finished spending $1.8 billion on a nuclear plant, but the utility blames drought for a rate surcharge this month.Hydroelectric accounts for a small part of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s energy portfolio, but it historically has played a major part in meeting peak demand... Increasingly, TVA is turning to natural gas to meet peak demand. Last week, it paid $180 million to a California company to begin the design and construction of “peaking plants” that produce electricity from natural gas.
What can people do to help reduce "peak demand," and save money, when drought takes away the green hydro-power option? Getting "take out" food only shifts the electricity consumption from home to a restaurant; plus it adds the footprint of pickup or delivery.
Hopefully, TVA will steer its consumers toward "smart metering," a marketing scenario where electricity bills reflect hourly changes in demand by the consumer. In that future scenario, one way to save electricity and money would be to cook with a 'crock pot' (a brand name of the generic 'slow-cooker.' Timer-controlled rice steamers fall into the same category. You can have them do the cooking before you arrive home, pre-peak.
Note: there is some confusion around whether slow cookers reduce net electricity consumption, a subject addressed at length on this Stretcher web post. This controversy gets to a really basic crock pot design issue that has long annoyed this writer. Why do not slow cookers come with superior exterior insulation and energy star ratings? Surely there are more efficient ways to stabilize the internal temperature than using high-mass thick ceramic pot walls to moderate internal temperature via damping of outward heat loss. It couldn't be that much more expensive to add a Vacuum Bottle -like exterior shell and part insulted glass cover.
Consumer Reports mentions in passing that "Several manufacturers have added insulation or a layer of plastic to the outer shell to minimize the heat and prevent accidental scalding when touched." Anyone have a model to recommend?
Via::DecaturDaily.com, "Drought and high power costs - Why Valley electric bills go up when water in river goes down." Image credit::Decature Daily, Tennessee Valley Authority's Wheeler Dam power house and transmission facility.
Whatever happened to using something like flywheel energy storage system? From what I understand it would be same concept of water towers. Store energy during non-peak and release it when demand is high.
One better than putting insulation in a slow-cooker is to use a vacuum to insulate it like a thermos. Then the insulation is so good that once it's heated up to cooking temperature, you don't need any additional power at all.
The product linked from my name is a set of a cook pot and a vacuum-insulated jacket for it. You put your stew in the pot and heat it up on the stove. Once it's boiling, you move it to the vacuum jacket. It won't continue to boil, but it will be just a few degrees below boiling, and will keep cooking for hours if necessary.
It's expensive, but for low-energy cooking and convenience, it's fantastic. One nice side benefit is that you can't accidentally burn anything. If you leave something in too long, it will get overcooked, but you can't burn the food or start a fire.
I've had one for a few years and find it works really well. The only significant limitation is that if you have too little food/water in it, it doesn't stay hot as well, and you sometimes need to move it back to the stove for a bit to boost the heat before returning it to the jacket to finish cooking. But I've never needed to do that with it more than half full.