Infared ceramic and quartz oven panels

[LHarrington]

Good morning,
I have been asked to estimate the operating cost of a Infrared Ceramic and quartz oven panel. These units are 48" x 72" with 72, 650w, 480volt/3 phase ceramic FTEs. I've scratch around on the web for a quick answer calculator but haven't found one I trust. I fully respect there are a ton of considerations to be made here but if any of you know of a quick sight I could reference and plug some number in I would appreciate it. Also in your experiences which is better Ceramic or Quartz? The question I was presented with was "should we consider replacing our gas fired ovens with these panels? Would this be cheaper than what were doing now?"

Thank you
LHarrington

 

[winnie]

The raw cost of running one of these panels is trivial to calculate; simply the kilowatts per panel * the operating time in hours * the cost per kwh; but of course you knew that.

The real question is 'What will the operating time of the panel be in the application?'

I strongly suspect that burning fuel will be cheaper than running these electric panels, unless the electric panels provide substantially more efficiency delivering the heat to the actual process where it is needed. When you burn fuel you have to deal with the heat carried away by the exhaust gas, you have thermal mass in your furnace that you need to heat up, etc. With an electric element you can provide even radiant heat close to your process with very little thermal mass.

On the other hand, fuel is much less expensive per BTU than electric resistance heating; 1 'therm' of natural gas burned produces the same heat as 29KWh through a resistance heating element. This makes the raw cost of the BTUs about 3x-4x greater if you get them from electricity rather than burning fuel.

-Jon