Aga electric conversion - is it worth it?

I recently had some very detailed feedback from a customer whose 2 oven Standard aga I converted from oil (although it was originally solid fuel) over a year ago. It has two conventional electric hobs (not induction) During that time he has been closely monitoring the running costs of the hobs and ovens at different settings, and experimenting to get the best out of the conversion In his most recent email (which he has kindly given me permission to copy below), he talks about running costs, performance of the Electrickit conversion, the amount of heat given out by the aga after conversion and how modifying the flue can reduce running costs amongst other things. It is well worth a read if you are looking for real customer experience and feedback on whether converting your aga is going to be worthwhile.

Here is what he said:

‘Just an update on our AGA which you converted just over a year ago.

When I first read about people converting their AGAs to Electric I was quite sceptical. I couldn’t see how running such a high energy consumer as an AGA on a fuel that cost approx. 22p per KwH could be anything other than ruinously expensive when compared to oil at approx. 6.5p per KwH.

Our oil fired AGA suffered very disappointing performance since the spec of home heating oil was changed in 2016. We had to do something and our choices were Propane, electricity or to scrap the AGA altogether, all of which we carefully considered. We are so glad we decided on an electric conversion.

Having run it for a year now we have re-learnt to cook on the electric AGA because in many ways it is quite different, just as you said it would be. Now that we are familiar with it we really appreciate the completely reliable temperature and consistent results. When it was oil fired the temperature would fluctuate with a combination of ambient temperature, the strength of the wind over the chimney, and how clogged up the burner had become. We miss the instantly available heat from the left hot plate but overall it is a better cooker than before.

As I mentioned above I was ready for this to come at a cost so I am really surprised at how economical it has been to run. For 7 months of the year we will run the ovens at 200C for 16 hours a day and we will on average have the top plates on for 4 hours a day mainly drying clothes. As you know I had separate meters fitted to the Ovens and Plates so we have a more accurate idea of what the AGA costs to run separate from the electricity we use in the rest of the house. We find this is costing us a fairly consistent £90 per month so £630 for the 7 months we run it. For the other 5 months we tend to use our ceramic hob and Neff oven which are more suited to occasional Summer use.

Our oil fired AGA pretty much heated the whole of our cottage on its own with the boiler cutting in during cold spells. There is no doubt that the electric AGA does not provide the same amount of space heating but it does still provide quite a lot. Everyone asks you how much will it cost to run and I can see that is a very difficult question for you to answer because everyone will use their AGA in different ways. However, when considering how much it costs to run it is important to take into account the contribution it makes to the overall heating of the property.

When you converted the AGA you left the chimney in place for the ovens to vent. When we had that chimney capped the builder was surprised at the amount of heat that was drifting up the flue so we stuffed some mineral wool up the bottom of that flue. You advised that we should make provision for the ovens to be able to vent into the kitchen and advised that we would notice more cooking smell. We have not found cooking smell to be any problem and would recommend blocking the flue as this reduced the running cost by over 20%.

It is hard to believe that running the AGA on 22p electricity could cost less than 6.5p oil but that has been our experience. I don’t fully understand the science of this but I can only think that a vast amount of the heat generated by burning oil ends up going up the chimney. Also, when an oil fired AGA is sucking in air to burn it is sucking in the warmest air in the house, that being the air right next to the AGA and this is replaced by air from outside. With the electric AGA all the heat it generates stays in the kitchen so long as you have blocked the old flue.

Overall we are very pleased with our electric conversion. It is not better in every respect but the plusses certainly outweigh the minuses and our lovely old AGA has a new lease of life.’