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When you look around your house to find things that are causing your electricity bills to push the upper bands of what you're comfortable with, the first type of appliances you should suspect is anything that affects temperature. So, appliances like water heaters, electric fireplaces, A/Cs, refrigerators, and of course, electric cookers and ovens. These electric-powered ovens are a bigger concern than anything a fridge or A/C can do, because producing heat uses much more power than cooling. For instance, an electric oven can use as much energy in one hour as a fridge might use in two days.
Of course, if you don't use your oven much, if at all, there's hardly any need to scrutinize its power consumption; you'll probably find better success avoiding some common mistakes that are increasing your electricity bill. However, if your total monthly oven hours are approaching 15 hours, it might be time to research how many watts per hour your electric oven uses and what percentage of your monthly consumption it accounts for.
Many electric ovens use 2.3 kW per hour (kWh) for baking/cooking and up to 5,000 watts for more serious roasting. According to 2024 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average monthly electricity usage is 865 kWh, with a U.S. city-average rate of $0.188 per kWh (via the Federal Reserve), which works out to about $160 a month. At 15 hours of oven use a month, that's about $6-$14 a month or 3.75%-8.75% of the average monthly electricity bill.
What can you do about your oven's electricity consumption?
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If you're not ready to reduce the amount of cooking you do overall, there are some alternatives you can adopt instead. For starters, you could opt to do roasting in an air fryer instead of an oven. As we've covered in our comparison of air fryers and ovens' electricity consumption, air fryers generally use less power and require less cooking time than ovens, partly because of their smaller size and partly because their design is more energy efficient. The same efficiency gains apply to microwaves and pressure cookers; a good rule of thumb is that if it fits comfortably in either, don't turn on the big oven.
Today, there are convection ovens that use similar technology to air fryers, and also come with the added benefit of a larger cooking room. But the problem is that those cost a lot of money upfront. They might save you some money in the long run, but it will take a while to see any financial returns.
Cooking techniques also make a considerable difference: Don't preheat unless the recipe demands it; cook in only oven-friendly cookware; turn off the oven and let residual heat cook the food when it's almost done; and resist the temptation to check on the food by opening the door frequently. If you keep your oven clean and you follow the guide here, you can be as efficient as possible without trespassing into unnecessary frugality.