You still can. Just add a / to the end of a YouTube video URL. Just know you will NOT be able to edit your post after that until this problem is sorted.
Crap, I was going to link to that video…
Just for the record, I use my microwave oven to heat up the dishes before serving when I cook something that cools fast, for instance thin fish fillets or small omelettes. Put the dish in the microwave, put a couple of spoonfuls of water it, cover with the next dish and repeat for as many dishes you need. Start the microwave set at high for a minute, leave the door closed when it stops. When the meal is ready, take the warm dishes from the microwave, pour the water away and serve the food. I don’t think this costs me more than 2 or 3 € a year and is worth it.
For tea an electric kettle is perfect, specially if you invenst in the ones with adjustble temperature. Some teas only need 60°C*, others boiling water, others anything in between. Using the right temperature for the different tea varieties is noticeably better.
* I am not asking you to convert to the metric system, it is not a religion, I just ask that if you are interested in how much 60°C are in Fahrenheit, you look it up, not me.
Nyah, nyah! 
Wall warts ain’t what they used to be. Up until about 20 years ago, they used a transformer, a rectifier, and a filter to convert high-voltage AC into low-voltage DC. Even when you weren’t using one to power a device, they still dissipated significant power internally as heat in their components. Modern wall warts use switched-mode power supplies, which are not only more efficient when powering a device, they also consume almost no energy when not powering a device.
Yep. Many varieties of prepared frozen foods like Stouffer’s contain directions like “Microwave on high for ‘x’ minutes. Peel back film, stir, and re-cover. Microwave on high for ‘y’ more minutes. Let stand for 2 minutes.” None of which is necessary. I just add up x+y and nuke at 50% power for twice the time while I go about doing other things. Works perfectly, and no need to let stand. Might not work for special products that actually require high power, like those with reflective foil packaging used for microwave browning.
Totally agreed in general. But with a situational caveat …
In the days before near universal turntables in microwaves, the “stir” in the middle was actually pretty necessary because of the very uneven heating pattern inside the oven cavity. Which the turntable evens out by the very low-tech method moving the food effectively randomly through the uneven standing waves.
Many cheap, small, or crappy microwaves, like those often found in office lunchrooms, lack a turntable. Plus all those old raggedy ones where the turntable motor has failed or the glass platter has been broken & not replaced.
Absent a turntable, stirring mid-nuke is real valuable for those things that can be stirred. With a turntable your (X+Y) * 2 at 50% power works great.
This is demonstrably not true. Perhaps he was just pointing out that using gas to generate electricity was inefficient.
People have pointed out that the difference is marginal and I was well aware of that when I asked the question. I also did not ask about costs because self-evidently, the costs will depend on tariffs.
Notwithstanding Mighty Mouse’s non-scientific test, my WAG is that an electric kettle is best, provided that the volume of water remains the same. Gas comes a poor third because much of the energy is wasted.
As for tariffs - I am currently paying 31.24p per kWh for electricity and 9.74p for gas.
Err…“cost” is in the title of the OP. Your OP. Are you changing the parameters of the question?
What’s nonscientific? He did an actual controlled experiment and measured all the key variables.
Mistake on my part. I do finish the question saying: someone on this board with the skills to calculate which is the most efficient in terms of kWh of energy.
He didn’t allow for the 25% difference in volume.
Thank you. I can assure you that I have seen hundreds of millions in expenditure approved on the strength of a lot less rigorous measurements.
From the video it seems the answer is an electric kettle is most efficient at boiling water (least energy consumed at a home consumer level). And, of course, there are better and worse kettles when it comes to efficiency.
Wait, what?
I measured what it would take to boil 14 oz of water (the size of my mug). The excess 4 oz is just waste, but it is unavoidable waste.
You might was well only account for the cost of the electricity used and not the amount lost in transmission. But the utility company is going to charge you for both.
Worth mentioning, however, that another “feature” of wall warts using cheap switching power supplies is that they typically generate electrical noise. Not usually something one would notice or care about, but one may care very much if using IEEE 1901 type powerline adapters for home networking.
He did. He heated the minimum amount he needed to produce a cup of hot water using different tools in his household according to their safe operating directions. The fact that you need to use a little more water if you use the kettle (or a pot on the stove) is a critical component of the hypothesis that you might save money using the microwave.
I heat water for tea in a kettle on the stove, but I don’t waste the extra water: it gets used for a neti pot solution or a hummingbird sugar solution. I don’t need to boil water for either, but this way we avoid the infinitesimally small chance of snorting a brain eating microbe with the neti pot and give the hummers a cleaner brew. So, again, a pretty small difference between microwave and kettle. We do save money and resources of some kind by not having a microwave.
Corporations will pass a $billion project with a nod, but spend an hour debating the design of a bicycle shed.
For some values of “significantly”. If it’s, say, a watt per transformer, that means that leaving it plugged in continually will add up to 8.8 kWh per year. Around here, electricity costs around ten cents per kWh, so that’d be less than a dollar a year. And that’s counting the entire year as waste time, but obviously the reason you have the device is because you use it sometimes.