Cooker Fuel Guide

The Different Types of Cooker Fuel and How They Work

Thornhill Range Cookers have been designed to run on a number of different fuels; wood, wood pellet, oil and electricity.

The energy used to run range cookers is approximately the same in kW hours, so running costs will depend on the fuel you choose. The amount of hours will vary from person to person, some use just 2,000kw/annum, whilst others heating a cold room might use up to 10,000 kW. As a comparison an oil or gas-fired AGA range cooker would use over 25,000kW if left on all year.

The current (2022) approximate costs per kW hour of energy are:

Contrary to popular belief, electricity is not very low as a lot of it is generated by burning fossil fuel, when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Most of the rest is Nuclear which has it’s own difficult problems. (storing waste for 1,000’s of years).

Because a Thornhill Range Cooker is only on when you need it, and at the temperature you require, it is about 1/5 the running cost of a traditional manufacturer.

Wood
Many people looking for an environmentally-friendly cooker purchase wood burning ranges. They are not only carbon neutral, they are also beautiful to look at and they bring a kitchen to life.

The Thornhill wood burning range cooker is the cleanest burning, most efficient cooker you can buy and has passed all the DEFRA tests for smokeless areas. You can use one in Central London.

Wood Pellet
Our wood pellet cooker range is the first in the world. It is easy to use and is environmentally friendly, with ultra-low CO2 emissions. Wood pellets are made using left-over products from the timber industry, as well as virgin soft wood, – they usually consist of compacted sawdust produced from sawmills, furniture construction and construction or other wood usually discarded in logging operations.

They burn incredibly efficiently with very little waste and only need cleaning out about once a month. Wood pellets are relatively inexpensive and are a viable alternative to oil.

Oil
Oil is one of the most economical fuels for cooking and heating available today for those not on mains gas.

The Thornhill oil-fired ranges can have a balanced flue, which means that you don’t need to have a chimney as long as the cooker can be fitted onto an outside wall.

Gas
Natural Gas is the cleanest of all fossil fuels, used carefully it can be both economical and ‘green’ only to be surpassed by wood burning. If you are on LPG then a Thornhill Range Cooker will save you a lot of money as LPG is about twice the cost of Natural gas.  The gas cookers are almost exactly the same and the oil and gas burners can be swapped.

Electric

Thornhill Range Cookers produce 2 models of 3-oven cookers and a 5 oven electric. As electricity is the most expensive fuel and often generates more carbon dioxide than any other fuel source, we do not recommend using electric cookers to heat the kitchen, that said you can leave them on low so they are ‘warm’ for around £1.00 per day. See our table above to see relative fuel costs.

Currently in the UK, electricity is generated from fossil fuel with around 20% renewable and 30% low carbon nuclear. (electricity has to be produced from something as it is a means of transmitting energy and is not a source of energy).