Hi Mike,

That's interesting. I wonder if your Thermador being dual fuel works
a little differently from your standard, run of the mill electric
range. We have a dual fuel Heartland Legacy, but the original range
(another Frigidaire) was all electric and the circuit supplying it is
equipped with a 40-amp breaker which, for the moment, I'll assume is
the norm. If we abide by the 80 per cent rule and assuming a full 240
volts, that gives us roughly 7,700 watts to work with.

A standard 30-inch range would have four cook-top burners and two oven
elements (bake and broil). I guess the question we must ask ourselves
is do we have enough capacity at 40-amps to supply all or a reasonable
combination of these elements without tripping the breaker? I realize
it's not likely we'd have all four burners turned on high and the oven
pre-heating, but it would be interesting to see just how far we might
push our luck.

Quoting from the Whirlpool's website, "Electric coil ranges usually
have two high-output elements (8-inch coils rated 2,600 Watts) and two
low-output elements (6-inch coils rated 1,500 Watts)." Using these
numbers, if all four burners were turned on high, our combined load
would be 8,200-watts (34 amps) or just slightly over 85 per cent of
our circuit's capacity.

Now I'm guessing a standard bake element is 3,000-watts and a broil
element is about the same or perhaps a little higher. If we assume
the two elements total 6,000-watts, we stand at 25 amps or just a
little over 60 per cent of total capacity.

If we have our two large burners turned on and both oven elements
operating, demand exceeds 11,000-watts (47 amps) and our breaker
trips. However, these same two burners and just the bake element
drops us back down to 8,200 watts/34 amps which should keep the power
flowing.

So, realistically speaking, operating both oven elements on a 40-amp
circuit doesn't seem feasible. With dual fuel, it won't be a problem
but with an all electric range, you would have to bump things up to 50
or even 60 amps. Any idea what size breaker is normally used for a
standard 30-inch range? I'm guessing 40 only by what I see in my own
panel, but perhaps 50 or 60 amps is more common.

Cheers,
Paul

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:00:36 -0600, Mike Hartigan
wrote:

When I was a kid (1960's), our old Frigidaire did this. Today (still
a kid only bigger), our new Thermador does this. (ours is dual fuel,
not because all gas wasn't available, but because we wanted the
advantages of dual fuel.) ....

Our Thermador uses the upper for broiling (duh!), both the upper and
lower to preheat, switching to lower only to maintain temperature.
The convection setting has its own element.

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