The Sustainability Review:
Gas Kitchen Ranges

This month, we’ll talk about another appliance that I think we pay less attention to when it comes to efficiency: the kitchen range. It’s not too often we see anyone talk about energy and cookstoves; in fact, there is no Energy Star label given to cookstoves—that says it right there.

There are many types of cookstoves: electric, gas (propane or natural), wood, dung, etc. I’m going to focus on gas stoves and their various components and what makes one more or less efficient. Let’s break our discussion into cooktop burners and ovens.

TOP BURNERS
The real nitty gritty of efficiency in cooktops stems from how you ignite your burners and what happens during the times you’re not using your stove (standby losses). Most burners light from either standing pilot or electronic ignition.

The standing pilot is a small flame that stays lit ALL the time and consumes fuel the entire time, obviously not the choice for efficiency. It’s similar to idling your car all the time so you don’t have to turn the key on when you decide to drive somewhere. Pilot lights use on average 500 btu per hour (a btu is the amount of heat energy it takes to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree F). That equates to 48 gallons of propane, or $57 of natural gas per year per pilot light just to keep them lit (contact me via e-mail if you’d like to see my math and the general assumptions I made in doing it). To me, that is a pretty clear picture of why standing pilots aren’t the best choice. In my opinion, the electronic ignition system is the best choice. With this system, there is a switching mechanism that activates a small electric sparker that lights the burner when you turn it on, and consequently there is no pilot needed to light the burner. A drawback to some of these systems is that they won’t work when you don’t have electricity available and try to light them with a match (many do work fine, however).

OVENS
Ovens are a little different than top burners. When we cook on a burner, it stays lit while we cook and we turn it off when we’re done. With an oven, we desire the box to stay a certain temperature, therefore, we need some method to turn the oven on and off to keep our temperature consistent. Since we aren’t going to stand around and turn the burner on/off while our cookies bake, some automation needs to exist. There are three methods used today: standing pilot, glow bar and electronic ignition. Until a few years back, most gas ovens had a standing pilot light that did just that: stood there and waited for the sensor to flow gas to the main burner in the oven and then lit the gas, making the oven warm. Those do still exist, but another little bugger stole the show: the glow bar.

Few people know that a mini electric burner lives in their oven that turns on when you fire up the oven. This little glow bar does just that, glows red hot while the oven is on using 250-500 watts continuously. The sole purpose is to re-light the oven when it needs a little warming up. Pretty ridiculous concept in my book, especially for those of us that use an oven regularly. You will be hard pressed to find an oven without one or a salesperson that has any concept of what you are talking about. This type of system has major flaws: it uses a significant amount of electricity, those who live off-grid can’t use them, and your oven won’t work if the power is out. There is a solution…

The electronic ignition oven that only one company makes, Peerless Premier, (this is a domestic company that employs 100% union employees). The electronic ignition system works like this: when you turn the oven on, you hear the tick of the electronic ignition activating, lighting a conventional pilot light. This pilot then turns the main oven burner on when needed, and the oven behaves just like a piloted oven. When you turn the oven off, the pilot light goes out. That simple. This system solves the problem of standing pilots, wasteful glow bars, functions during power outages (you can manually light the pilot without the electronic ignition if needed), and works in off-grid homes well.

Peerless offers a wide range of choices, from apartment-size units to 36” stainless six-burner models. Their prices are less than any other gas ranges I’ve seen (we just bought the stainless 30” four-burner sealed range for $899 at Howard Hughes). Their white and black enamel models are usually around $400-$500. Howard Hughes doesn’t stock this range, but they will happily get it through their distributor if you ask.

Mike Forbes now that he lives in a fancy tent with his family near Moscow Mountain.

© Copyright on articles, recipes and images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors, except were otherwise noted.

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