Save energy in the kitchen: our recipe for lower bills

With Power Saver¹, we’re always looking for ways to help ScottishPower customers make the most of off-peak times and save on their energy bills. By helping you identify high-use habits, we’re showing you how you could save by shifting – and cooking is one of the areas with the most potential to make an impact.

We may not be able to help you improve your cooking skills, but in this blog, we do have a few tips on how you could  save energy and money in the kitchen.

Most importantly, when you sign up to Half-Price Weekends²and do your weekly meal prep between 11am and 4pm on Saturday or Sunday, you’ll only pay half the cost of any electricity used³– and that’s one way to make your midweek meals taste even better.

Check your appliances

The Energy Saving Trust says around 4% of your energy bill each year is spent on powering kitchen appliances⁴, which is why it’s important to choose energy efficient appliances. All appliances come with an energy efficiency label, which has a colour-coded scale from A (most efficient) to G (least efficient) and a QR code you can scan to get more detailed information.

Use the right appliance for the job

Now that air fryers are a kitchen staple, there’s a lot of debate about which appliance works best for cooking and reheating. For example, microwaves are generally accepted to be most efficient at heating food up, as they only heat up the food and not the air around it.

The Energy Saving Trust recently did some research and found that air fryers are the best option when cooking one meal for 1-2 people, as they’re cheaper to run than an oven due to their smaller size. But due to limited space, they aren’t the best option for meal prepping and batch cooking.

Using your electric hob can still be an efficient and cost-effective way to cook quick meals, but there are still some tips to be aware of – like boiling water in the kettle before adding it to the pan and covering the pan while cooking to avoid losing heat and wasting energy.

The Energy Saving Trust also says that electric ovens are the best option for batch cooking and meal prep due to their capacity, even though they’re one of the most expensive kitchen appliances to run. If you can batch cook your meals for the week during our half-price hours on Saturday or Sunday, you can cut the cost of using your oven by half – and you won’t need to use your oven throughout the week, helping you save even more.

Cook with reheating in mind

When it comes to reheating your batch-cooked meals throughout the week, the most efficient option is your microwave, as it reheats your food quicker – and costs less to run as a result. When planning your meals for the week, it’s worth considering if the meals you’re prepping can be easily reheated in the microwave to make the most of your savings. If you’ve frozen any leftovers, defrosting them in the fridge before reheating them in the microwave will use less energy than cooking them from frozen.

Your meals for the week may not need to be reheated at all, in which case you could limit your cooking costs for the week to your half-price weekend hours

If you work during the week, we understand you don’t always have the time or the motivation to cook something delicious in the evenings. Weekends can be busy, and it might not feel like there’s time to set aside to meal prep for the week – but with Half-Price Weekends, it pays to plan ahead.