Electricity use in your commercial kitchen

Do you know your kitchen’s power potential?

When opening a new food service business and adding equipment to an already established building, most operators don’t think about the energy capacity of the kitchen or building. Basically, what equipment the circuitry can support. The Pros at ACityDiscount advise customers to research and hire a trained electrician to evaluate the buildings circuitry before purchasing high-power cooking equipment.

To put this into perspective, let’s say that you want to turn a wing shop into a pizza place. Installing a pizza oven in that space will take a different voltage level than a fryer, which is why it’s important to have a professional determine what your circuits can hold, so that you can purchase the right equipment for your application. For example, if you have a circuit or outlet that can only handle 1000 watts and you plug in a tea brewer, which requires at least 1200 watts for power, you will cause the circuit to blow when you plug it in.

One of the common myths about high voltage is that it causes fuses to blow. Voltage doesn’t affect fuses; they blow when a sustained electrical current that is too high for its capacity passes through them for a period. It acts as a safeguard against fires.

Understanding Amps, Volts and Watts

In order to understand voltage and electricity better, it’s important to have a good understanding of the differences between these units of measurement as they apply to commercial food equipment.

Amperes

Also known as amps, these measure electric currents – the speed of electrons per second. When buying new equipment and appliances, you must consider the amp load of the circuits in your facility.

If you have a 30-amp circuit the safe load is 24 amps. If you already have equipment that draws 20 amps and you’re looking at something new with 120-volts requires 6 amps to run, you will not be able to install it safely. Before buying equipment, one should confirm that the kitchen circuits will have the capacity to handle any new equipment. If circuits become overloaded, meaning they are forced to put out more energy than they are capable of in a certain period, it could start a fire.

Voltage

We know that amps measure currents or waves of electricity, but what moves the current along? That would be voltage. It is the force or pressure that causes the electricity to flow. Kitchen equipment holds different voltage requirements, so it is important to know what the rated amp draw is and the plug configuration, which can be assessed by an electrician.

Residential kitchen equipment and appliances use the standard 120-voltage, which rarely produce more than a few hundred watts of power.

Most heavy-duty electric kitchen equipment runs on 208 or 240-volt electrical supplies, which create more watts per amp as opposed to the standard 120. Whether your building uses 208 or 240 voltage depends on how the electricity is generated from higher-voltage transmission lines and how its distributed at the main circuit breaker.

Wattage

So, we know how to measure the speed of a current (amps), and we know what moves it along (voltage), but what is the resulting force of these two applications? That would be watts. This is a measurement of how much energy is released, basically, how much work a piece of equipment can perform. For example, a commercial microwave with 1800W will cook food in under 30 seconds, while a 1000W microwave will need up to 2 minutes to cook the same item. Most heavy-duty commercial microwaves like Midea makes will have a selectable 208- or 230/240-volt supply and will require a 20-amp outlet.

The higher the watts, the more power and output. This is not always dependent on amps and voltage, though. Sometimes, higher voltages can result in higher wattage with lower amps. This is important to note because operators and contractors should consider the existing amp load on a circuit to determine if new equipment can be safely installed.

Does your electrical wiring fit your foodservice concept?

Keep in mind that when you buy or rent an older building and the wiring was configured in the 80’s, then your wiring is now that old and may have outdated, lower voltage capacities from 110v to 220v. While 230v is still common in many parts of the world, some newer equipment types use even higher voltages.

One of the primary steps to opening a foodservice business is knowing how much equipment you will need for a given concept and determining if the power in that establishment will support the equipment you need. For example, if you want to do a wing concept and you need 6 fryers, but there are only two plugs on the wall, how would you go about that?

Remember, extension cords are not an option in commercial kitchens because they create all types of hazards. So, how does one go about turning a plan into reality with what they have?

William Little, ACityDiscount sales specialist and former head chef at Pijiu Belly, says that sometimes customers must scale back and even change their concept. “Many don’t realize this until they have already bought all of their equipment,” he said.

He goes on to explain that there are equipment pieces like refrigerators and freezers, walk-ins, ovens and certain types of display cases that need to be hard wired into the circuit, which means they can’t be moved. If an operator has not adequately planned for this, they may have to spend extra dollars on re-wiring a section of their facility if the equipment was bought before the doing the proper legwork. Also, let’s say, you bought a piece of equipment with a 208/240V plug configuration and you don’t have an outlet that fits that plug, you may have to have an electrician come out and rewire your outlet for that configuration, which, on average costs about $500 per plug.

Imagine the headache and time you could save by simply working with an electrician and one of our food equipment specialists to determine the right equipment type for your establishment. Sometimes it is as easy as placing a special order for any piece of equipment with the plug configuration you need.

It is also important to note that more voltage does not necessarily mean a better product. Our experts advise that it is more about how an item is built. A good example would be an Imperial Restaurant Range with two ovens that is built for 240V output, with 120 to power the top range and 120 to power the ovens. So, if the bottom ovens stopped working for whatever reason, the top burners can still be used because the voltage is broken up through the unit through three-phase wiring. A piece of equipment like this will use a larger, 240V plug or will be hardwired into the circuit or outlet. Three-phase electrical wiring uses 3 hot wires to carry the electricity with each wire providing 120 volts of electricity. Single-phase wiring uses two hot wires each carrying 120 volts. Three-phase is more efficient than single phase because it breaks up the voltage that any piece of equipment needs. Imagine one person pushing a car up a hill, verses three people of equal strength pushing that same car up a hill. This is the difference between single and three-phase power.

Need help sourcing the right equipment for your establishments power capacity? Call our sales team at 404-752-6715 or stop by our Norcross showroom at 6286 Dawson Blvd. NE in Norcross, GA 30093.