Hi all. I had a post on here earlier about single burner gas pizza ovens. I have since located a bakers pride E541 electric pizza oven at a super price of $600 with stones and in very good condition. My concerns are with the monthly cost of electric. Does anyone have experience with electric over gas or any ideas of the cost per month between the two. I still have not purchased an oven yet and this particular model is a full size considerable to a y600 model but electric instead of gas. Any comments and opinions greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ron.
Hi ronv:
the E 541 is just 6 inch smaller R-to-L inside than the Y 600 That makes no difference capacity wise until you get down to 10 in. pizzas then the 600 can hold 3 more.
The electrics are usually quite a bit more costly to heat but its hard to make a comparison for various stores.
You can make a comparison based on both types running full out for a specific time,
the electric oven is 12 KW per hour
The gas oven is 120000 BTU per hour
Phone your gas and electrical providers and get the cost for each of the two figures above then multiply by say 1000 hours and see the difference between the two.
Electric ovens do not recover as fast as gas from a heavy load. Also gas when burned produces some moisture electric units do not. electric ovens produce a dryer product then do gas ovens.
Heating elements in electric ovens burn out . Over a length of time the elevtric will require mor service calls than a gas unit.
The above are reason for the cheep price few pizza operators would use them except if there was no gas available.
You eather pay at the start or pay in money and aggrivation later
I allways reccomend gas over electric.
George Mills
Hi Ron,
This is a very open ended question. Different ovens have different type and thickness insulation. Over time this insulation may lose its efficiency or be taken out all together. Furthermore true consumption depends on many factors. e.g. temp you set the oven at, how frequently you open and close the front door, how heavily it is being used, what type of product you are putting in it and so on.
A simple way to get a very approx estimate would be to find out what the cost of each KW of electricity VS a BTU of gas per hour in your locality. Then look at the rating of the oven you are looking at. e.g. BP E-541 is rated at 12KW/hr. BP Y-600 is rated at 120,000BTU/hr per hour. Assuming it would take one hour for the oven to reach its normal operating temperature, you can get a very rough idea of the cost involved. Just to clarify we are not comparing power here but only consumption per hour.
Hope this helps.
Fash
http://pizzaovens.com
877.367.6836
More comparison Y 600 gas oven to E 451 Electric oven
BTU’s and kilowatts measure different types of quantities. A BTU (British Thermal Unit) measures heat (energy), while a kilowatt (1000 watts) measures power (energy per unit time).
1 BTU equals 0.0002928 kilowatt-hour
1 BTU/minute equals 0.01757 kilowatt.
To convert watts to BTU’s, the factor is 1 kilowatt of power = 3412.1416 BTU/hr
1 kW = 3412.1416 BTU/hour with appropriate significant figures
Therefore 12 KW electric oven is 12 X 3421.1416 BTU is like a 40945.70 BTU gas oven.
That is 79,045.30 less BTU than the Y 600
That indicates it would take almost 3 of the E 541 ovens to produce the same pizzas at full speed as could be produced by one Y 600 oven.
Perhaps a more knowledgeable person can check the above.
George Mills
I’ve been using the same e541’s for 30 years. They do not make a better oven. At our high point we cranked out 17K per week using 2 decks. When one slowed down switched to the other. As far as electrical cost I ran my whole shop for about 1200 per month. Had 1 24 " gas grill that cost 200 per month. Maintenance was very cheap and once you figure them out are easily self repaired. No part costs more than 100 dollars. In 30 years I had to replace the door rod assembly twice on the main oven. takes about 30 minutes and the thermostat maybe 3 times again in about 30 minutes. I highly recommend these ovens if you can still find them. I only paid 500 each for mine. Now that’s value buddy.
We bought this place about a year and a half ago and it came with 2 stacked E541s. We have wanted to change over to gas because we know how much more efficient it is (my dad also works in HVAC) but I’ve been happy with the way they have performed so we haven’t changed. I dont have our cost/kw hr handy, but our electric bill this month is $860. This is with no AC, but also a very large 9 door walkin/retail cooler, 2 pepsi coolers, a prep table, a drop freezer, standup freezer and a deli cooler. We run both ovens from about 2pm to 9:30pm.
The building is coming up on 20 yrs old. I don’t know if these are the original ovens, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. I was always very happy with their performance. About 3 months ago, I left after disagreements with the family. After a month I came back and they didn’t seem to be working the same. The temp has been wildly fluctuating (getting hot) and they don’t seem to recover when adding several pizzas at once, as someone said above. In the past though, this was never a problem. We would do large orders and fit 5 15" pizzas in at a time with no drop in temp. (There’s room for 6, but I left an empty spot to make spinning halfway through easier.)
Long story short (too late), I’ve been happy with them overall. Even the recent issues I’ve been able to work through after trying different things and problem solving. I still want to go gas eventually, but I’ll have to be pretty sure I’ll get the same results or better if switch.
Good luck.