Cost Efficiencies of a Thornhill Range Cooker

The Cost Efficiencies of a Thornhill Range Cooker

Thornhill range cookers are designed to run only when you want them to. Many other range cookers, including Aga range cookers, are built to run constantly, wasting valuable energy at times when it is not needed. Thornhill range cookers have been engineered with you and the environment in mind, with specially designed fuel systems aimed to run as efficiently as possible on your choice of operating schedule.

It isn’t easy to give a simple comparison between a Thornhill range cooker and another brand, particularly as range cookers are also room heaters. As a rough guide, we have given below an imaginary running programme to show you the kind of savings you could make with a Thornhill range cooker.

** A rough estimate at 3 cubic metres a year @ £70 a cube.
*** Using Aga range cookers AIMS control

The above calculations are using the following prices: Oil – 50p/litre = 4.9p/kWh; Natural Gas –4p/kWh; LPG (bottled gas) – 8p/kWh; Electricity – 12p/kWh; Pellet – £240/tonne = 4.8p/kWh.

These calculations are based on the following scenario:

• A large kitchen that needs a 2.75kW (600 x 1200mm double panel) radiator to warm it.
• You want to wake up to a warm kitchen and set your heating to come on at 06.00and off at 08.00. You want a warm kitchen in the evening and set your heating to come back on at 16.30 and off at 22.30. TOTAL HEATING = 8 HOURS PER DAY.
• Mid-November to mid-February: 2.75 kWh of heating/hour = 90 days a year at 32 kWh/day.
• Mid-September to mid-November and mid-February to mid-April: 1kW heating/hour = 90 days a year at 12kWh/day.
• Mid-April to mid-September: oven just turned on for 2 hours cooking/day = 120 days a year at 7.5kWh/day.
• No cooking for 25 days a year (holidays, BBQs etc)
• TOTAL of 5,160kWh/year @ 85% efficiency = 6,070kWhs.
• If you own an Aga range cooker it is shut down for 25 days in the summer.
• If you have AIMS fitted to your Aga range cooker, you turn it down to low as the above hours.
• The Aga range cookers and Thornhill range cookers running on oil, pellets or gas are 85% efficient.
• The electric Aga range cookers are 100% efficient and the Aga Total Control give the same energy to the room as the Thornhill range cookers.

Aga range cookers figures are based on the information below:

• 1) Aga Rangemaster’s figures of 40 litres/week consumption, turned off 25 days in the summer – see ( I have had to delete this link at the insistence of AGA Rangemaster Group Limited, please email if you need more information.
• 2) Aga Rangemaster’s figures of  425kWh/week, turned of 25 days in the summer – see 9I have had to delete this link)
• 3) Aga Rangemaster’s figures of  240kWh/week. 190kWh/week with AIMS – see PDF page 5
• 4) Aga Range cooker Total Control running costs are based on requiring the same heating to room and doing similar cooking to a Thornhill range but at 100% efficiency so just 5,160KWh/annum.

AGA Rangemaster Ltd, now use a ‘weekly standard menu’ to calculate running costs. see agaliving.com/aga-running-costs  . This is a good way of doing it and you can work backward from there to get the cooker running costs. The 3 oven AGA Total control is the nearest to the running cost of the Thornhill ECO Range cookers. Our cookers use about 6kW’s to heat the oven and hot plate from cold to 180 and 2-3kW/hour to maintain it at 200C.,so 35 kW’s per week would be about right. To compare the different fuels we need to multiply the cost per kW X 35.

Using gas @ 3p/kW  that is   £1.05p /week or £55 per annum

Using oil & pellets @ 5p/kW that is £1.75p/week or £91 per annum

Note: None of these prices include any element of heating above the 35kW/week, if you want to use the cooker as a room heater it will cost you the same as radiators, unless you have an electric range cooker when it will cost about 12p/kW.  Electricity is very expensive, not really for room heating.

Wood expect to use about 3 Cu. meters per annuly, but this will include a lot of heating as well as cooking ( approx.7,000kW or £840 worth of electricity)