Kitchen-Grade 12 Volt Cooking Appliances are an untapped industry in my opinion. There is a pressing need all over the world for simple, durable and affordable 12v cooking appliances, but most of the ones available are not designed for the rigors of daily use. After years of searching for alternatives, I could not really find anything.
This is part of what led me to do research into building DIY cooking appliances. Part of that is learning how they work and trying to improve their performance over time.
One of the key downsides for any 12v cooking appliances is energy consumption. It’s helpful to know exactly how much power is required to perform a given cooking test. Although I already knew how much power (watts) my appliances consume, I had no clue what the “quantity” of power consumed actually was. Thus I decided to perform a bench test in a controlled environment to get this information documented.
For the bench test I used one of my earlier 12v mini oven prototypes. It draws around 144 watts, and can reach temperatures of 350-400+ degrees Fahrenheit. I connected a 50 amp-hour RedODO LiFePo4 battery to the oven through a standard DC wattmeter. For the test I used bread dough provided by a family member. The oven is small so it was challenging to fit larger pieces of bread inside. Also meat, vegetables or a larger piece of bread can consume about 12% more watt-hours to cook properly.
Two phases were measured: oven pre-heat and actual cooking time. This is because once the oven is preheated, we can keep putting food inside to cook repeatedly. Therefore it makes sense to measure both separately.
Test Data – 12V Mini Oven 144W – Shop Ambient Temperature 83-86 F
| Phase / Item | Amp-Hours @ 12.8V | Watt-Hours | Temp |
| Pre-heat to 300F | 1.150 | 15.1 | 300+ F |
| Baking – Bread | 3.486 | 45.8 | 300-350 F |
| Meat / Veggies | ~3.904 | ~51.296 | 350-400 F |
I was not sure what to expect from such a test, but this data is very useful to compare future versions of ovens to, as well as for the sizing of solar power systems. Currently there are several more efficient versions of 12 volt ovens in development in my solar workshop. Hopefully they will perform better, we’ll see.
Thanks for reading, hope to see you next time! -Dave, SPE
Solar Thoughts blog 