Gas oven electricity use.

[jjackstone]

Maybe many of you are already aware of this, but I couldn't find a thread talking about it.

Like most of you, I keep a fairly close eye on my electricity usage. I had always assumed that using a gas oven meant that no electricity was used other than for igniting the flame. My stove does not have a pilot light. It does have piezo starters for the individual stove top burners and I just thought the oven lighted the same way. However after accidentally discovering that an excess of electric power was being used while the oven was on I had to check into it. Normally with nothing on in the house except small chargers, fish tank pumps, etc. the house will pull about a hundred watts. I noticed when the oven was on it was using an extra 400 watts. Couldn't believe it. After a little research I found that most modern gas ovens use what is called a glow bar to ignite the oven flame and that the bar stays on until the oven reaches its set temperature. I guess it could be a safety feature because the gas valve will only open when the glow bar has reach the temperature high enough to ignite the gas.

So, to all of you who already knew this sorry to bore you. Everyone else, hope you learned something new.

JJ