In misc.consumers.frugal-living Jeff wrote:

Now, I would say that most stoves use more energy on than off(there's
wide range here, I'm sure my old Jennaire uses no power when off).

Well, sure, like my toaster. It doesn't use any current when it's
not being used.

I don't know how much power a typical stove with electronic controls
uses but I found this.

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/transformers.html

After all, I knew that the
oven uses about 1000 watts while the clock uses five.

I think he is seriously over estimating the power usage of a
clock chip and LCD display. 1 Watt would be more like it.
5 Watts would be about right for an old mechanical stove clock.

How much energy the clock uses in a day: 5 (watts) x 24 (hours) =
120 (watt-hours)

Now divide that by 5 to get a more realistic value . . .

How long it takes the microwave to the same amount of energy:
120 watt-hours / 1000 watts = 0.12 hours, or 7.2 minutes

This means that if you use a typical microwave oven for less than 7.2
minutes/day, the clock uses more electricity than the oven. Wow.

I probably use my microwave in the 5 to 10 minutes per day range.

That sounds perhaps even low to me and it is possible it uses twice
the power while off. I suppose I could dig out my amprobe and check my
late model name brand microwave since I don't have a kill a watt meter.

In other words, he didn't want to test to find out his "estimate" was
bogus. He probably knew it was high.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.