best gas stove for off grid

for a while, Viking, used sparkers for the broiler, and oven, but now I hear they are going back to glowbars. You may confirm what's in the model you are looking at.

GE gas stove

I have been trying to find out the same information and little of any use is available. I just went ahead and purchased a GE gas range with electronic ignition (on sale and a floor model so I couldn't resist the price). It has a gas convection oven so the fan will undoubtedly consume some power when it is running, and I don't know what that will be. The info plate says that I need 9 amps at 120 volts, so I was curious what it actually requires just plugged in. 9 amps continuous would be ridiculous. Well I measured it, with just the electronics running, and my meter barely deflected. It looked like about 50 ma. The meter isn't very accurate at that deflection, but it is safe to say that the stove will not consume any significant amount of power when not cooking. I suspect that it might need something close to the 9 amps momentarily if the convection oven is running and you are lighting burners at the same time. I'm not worried about it. The oven will probably only be used a few hours per week, so total weekly consumption will be very low. Even at 9 amps that is only about 2 to 3 KWH per use. It will depend on the solar system, of course, and mine puts out about 14 KWH per day where I live, so the gas range is going to be just fine.

Is the oven/broiler ignition spark (do you hear zap zap zap) or Glow Bar (light like a 150W bulb when lighting, and 75w when running. Nearly all surface burners are spark.

Well brands are not all that different when it comes to a basic gas range which has both a cook top and oven. What you are shopping for is a range with Electronic Ignition which is actually an Oxymoron because all new gas ranges have electronic ignition. However Electronic Ignition does not mean both the cook top and oven use a SPARK Ignition. A large percentage use spark for the cook top and a Glow Bar for the oven.

The challenge is finding one with both oven and cook top use Spark Ignition. They use to be easy to find, but after some explosions and liability issues manufactures have shied away from them.

Glow bar

Since the range is sitting in the garage, waiting for spring to get to the cottage, I have not actually used it. Just plugged it in and measured idle current. So I checked the manual and they do say glow bar in the section on power outages. No other mention of it. So how much power does it use when the oven is running?

It is a power hungry electric heater that is on all the time.

Not ALL the time.

I know that the glow bar is not on all the time, but sounds like all the time the oven is running. I have seen old messages (2005 to 2007) on various sites that say intermittent, and I have seen numbers from 300 watts to 500 watts (so about a kilowatt-hr for a two hour roast), but I would like to know if those numbers are still accurate with modern ranges. Does anyone have specs on the glow bar today?

WTF - then how does it protect from gas build up and an explosion? If it was only on when you turn on the gas the glo bar would serve no purpose.

Process

From what I have read, the glow bar turns on first when you start the oven. When it gets hot enough, a circuit connected to a thermocouple turns on the gas valve. I also know the glow bar is not on all the time because I have plugged the range in, in the garage, seen the electronics working, and have measured the current it is drawing. My meter barely registers anything (and I tested it with a few other loads first - it is quite accurate) so I know the range, without burners or oven turned on, uses virtually no power. Maybe a few watts.

I cannot speak for all ovens, but I have used a Viking oven, about 15 years old model.
The glow bar heats up a bimetal strip to mechanically open the gas valve. Very simple and robust, not requiring a millivolt valve the the way a thermocouple would.
And for safety the glow bar does stay on the whole time that the thermostat is calling for heat. That way there is no chance of the flame getting blown out or going out from an air pocket in the gas flow.
When the thermostat reaches the set temperature it just turns the glow bar off and the valve closes as it cools.
The valve is positioned so that the flame does not heat it, only the glow bar does. (Actually two glow bars, just to cost you more to replace. )

The same technique was used for the infrared broil element.

The glow bar comes on at full power (there are hundreds of models of varied shape and wattage) to light the gas, and then when it assumes the gas has lit, cuts back to half power, if it's resistance stays high, it means the flame keeps it hot, and then the gas valve stays on. So the glow bar is full power for about 1 minute for starting, and then half power while the thermostat calls for flame. YMMV

My NG oven operates like this as well. The stovetop is via sparkers.

A quick search for "off grid gas stove" returned quite a few stoves that have no power cord. They generally use a small battery pack (AA) for spark to light. They are designed for Amish, off gridders, and those that suffer lots of power outages.

WWW

I would expect those have no oven - that is the biggest explosion danger area.