Electrical savings on coffee machines – An experiment
As a business, there are many factors and costs that need to be considered. One of the most important of these is the outgoing utilities required to keep your place of work up and running. Whilst previously this was a generally fixed cost year-to-year, the price of electricity has skyrocketed recently resulting in an almost quadrupling of rates since 2021, depending on the size of your business.
Even now, despite rates starting to stabilise, they are unlikely to fall meaning we should do everything we can to responsibly consume energy, helping both the environment and our own pockets.
Saving in the workplace.
Saving on costs is easier said than done though. In a business like a café, or a hotel there are certain amenities that are a necessity, and it would be impractical to turn off your espresso machine mid-way through the day, hoping your customers will not notice.
This is where the Crew Machines line of bean-to-cup coffee machines are leading the front with their eco-mode settings, reducing the temperature within the boiler and using up to 20% less energy in between busy periods.
But just how much can these modes save? Let’s find out!
Number Crunching.
To work out the average expected savings, I put the Crew CM50 to the test against the traditional multi-boiler espresso machine in our showroom. This way, I could directly compare the energy costs between a standard espresso machine you would find in coffee shop, the normal CM50 output, Eco-Mode 1, and Eco-Mode 2.
I tested the machines when “In-Use” which I recorded the kWh after a calculated 90 coffees made, a typical daily output for a small to average sized coffee shop. I separately recorded the kWh after making one cappuccino, leaving alone for an hour, and then making another cappuccino, to replicate the energy cost of a machine “on-standby”. Then I averaged these numbers over a week to show the total expected energy costs for a business open 6 days where a machine is on standby for a total of 5 hours each day and makes on average 90 coffees a day.
The results can be found here:
Crew CM50 saves over £14 a week.
The first thing that jumps out is just how much power a traditional machine draws, even when not in use. The size of the boilers requires a large amount of energy just to guarantee the machine is ready to make coffee at the correct temperature.
Crew Eco-mode can save up to 90% of your energy costs compared to traditional espresso.
In contrast, the CM50 on its default mode has an energy requirement more than 86% lower. This is reduced even further when switching on eco-mode 1, which when compared to the default mode has energy savings of over 16%, and eco-mode 2 having savings of over 21%.
Left: Energy savings of Crew CM50 compared to a traditional multi-boiler espresso machine,
Right: Percentage increase of energy savings for each eco-mode on Crew CM50.
Costs for Crew CM50 were 4 times less than a standard espresso machine.
Unlike other stand-by modes on heating appliances, the smart heating function works in such a way that making a coffee from eco-mode 1 or 2 only takes an extra 10, and 15 seconds respectively. So, your cappuccino can still be ready in under a minute!
The eco-mode settings do not increase energy efficiency during periods of high use however, as it requires the CM50 being in stand-by to lower the boiler temperature and generate savings.
In total, by switching to the Crew CM50, you can save over £10 a week, and the eco-modes allow you to save even more without having to sacrifice the speed or quality of your coffee.
This can be as much as £608.40 each year!
