The Restaurant Kitchen Energy Guide

Why kitchens are extreme energy environments

A commercial kitchen packs more electrical demand into fewer square metres than almost any other workplace. Where a typical office consumes modest power per square metre across lighting and IT, a working kitchen stacks refrigeration, cooking, extraction, dishwashing, and hot-holding into a space the size of a double garage — and runs much of it twelve to sixteen hours a day. The consequence shows up on the bill: energy is consistently one of the top three operating costs in hospitality, and electricity usually dominates the energy line in modern all-electric or mostly-electric kitchens.

Load one: refrigeration — the silent constant

Walk-in chillers and freezers, reach-ins, prep fridges, display cabinets, ice machines, and cellar or bottle cooling form the only load category that never stops. Refrigeration commonly accounts for a quarter to a third of a food business's total electricity. It runs hardest in warm weather — compressors fight heat — which makes it solar's best friend: peak refrigeration effort coincides with peak generation. For solar design, refrigeration is the baseload that guarantees an array always has somewhere to send its output, even on a closed Monday.

Load two: extraction — the legal constant

Canopy extraction must run whenever cooking happens, and in practice runs from first prep to final clean-down — 12 to 16 hours in a full-service kitchen. Fan motors plus the make-up air system add up to a steady multi-kilowatt draw all day. Two solar-specific notes: extraction's daytime hours overlap generation hours nicely, and extract discharge terminals matter for array layout — panels must sit clear of grease-laden plumes, or they will gradually coat and underperform. It is the detail that distinguishes installers who understand food premises from those who do not.

Load three: cooking — peaky and powerful

Induction hobs, combi ovens, fryers, griddles, and salamanders deliver the most dramatic draws — a busy line can pull tens of kilowatts at full song — but in bursts aligned to service. For lunch-trading venues those bursts land inside the generation window and soak up solar directly. Evening-led venues see less direct overlap, which is where batteries enter the conversation (and where we model honestly: storage suits some venues and not others — the costs page covers the maths). The trend toward all-electric kitchens, accelerating as gas appliances age out, only steepens this load — and strengthens the solar case with every replacement cycle.

Load four: warewashing and everything else

Pass-through dishwashers and glasswashers cycle continuously through service with heating elements that draw hard. Hot-holding, bains-marie, heated passes, and coffee equipment hum along underneath. Front of house adds HVAC — increasingly the swing load, as summer dining rooms need serious cooling exactly when the array peaks — plus lighting, tills, and music. Individually small, collectively a meaningful daytime plateau.

Reading your own profile

Three documents tell the story. Your bills give annual consumption and unit rates. Your half-hourly data (any business on a half-hourly meter can request it; smart-metered sites have it by default) shows the shape — the overnight refrigeration floor, the morning ramp, the service peaks. And your appliance schedule explains why the shape looks the way it does. With those three, a solar designer can model self-consumption properly instead of guessing. Without them, every quote is a roof-area formula wearing a confident font — one of the warning signs we cover across our FAQs.

What this means for your system

The design conclusion is consistent across venue types: size to the daytime plateau (refrigeration + extraction + the lunch overlap), not to the roof. That typically lands cafés at 8–20 kW, takeaways at 10–25 kW, pubs at 10–30 kW, restaurants at 15–50 kW, and hotels with F&B at 30–100 kW. Sized that way, self-consumption stays high, export stays low, and payback stays in the four-to-seven-year band that makes the investment defensible to any accountant. To see the profile-to-proposal process applied to your venue, the quote form starts it with three bills and a roof photo.