Rice cookers work great, I really like them. I most often have some form of cooked brown rice for breakfast. Load it up with fruit and nuts and a wee touch of molassas and you're talking about quality living.
But look at the bottom plate to see how much power it uses.
Mine said 400 watts.
This should be better.
So I opened it up to have a look inside.
First off, there's no insulation, not any.
Second off, I measured the cooker's wattage when it was off and was reading... It was drawing 385 watts before I turned it on!
So the way the circuit works is that the "warm" functions when ever the cooker is plugged in. The warming temp switch senses when an over temp situation happens (something above 212 F) and switches off. When the unit cools, the switch goes back on, etc. This power cycling keeps the rice warm and gobbles up huge watts.
So the most obvious hack is to disable the warm circuit.
The second is to add insulation.
The third is to insert an in-line diode to turn it into a half-wave device, drawing power only for half a wave, thus reducing power by half.
(to be continued)