Miele ranges are coming January 2015. 30" Induction range will retail for 7K. The induction may be available in December, but full line available in january. They are beautiful ! That 48" is a dream with speed cook oven/micro/wd....wish i had the space.maybe in the next house.FYI, Miele manufacturers 95% of their pieces- no cheap parts from Thailand/Mexico. They must only outsource the boxes they ship in.

In February we were making a decision about the AG ranges and were looking at American, Bluestar and Wolf. We did tons of research and looked and looked. At that time I was also thinking I wanted a color range rather than stainless, so that narrowed it down to Bluestar and American. We decided the American was a better value than the Bluestar and were ready to order until we did a final measurement and discovered that the extra depth of the Performer would not work in our particular configuration because a drawer on an adjacent wall wouldn't open. So, much as we would have liked it, that eliminated that possibility. Then, we found an AG Wolf floor model on clearance (one of the old models with the open burner) and bought that. I like it, but personally I wouldn't want the burners on the new model Wolf. And, there have been a couple times (maybe only 3 or 4) when I thought to myself I would have liked to have one of the more powerful burners from the Performer. In your shoes, I'd save the money and get the Performer. This doesn't mean I don't like the Wolf; it just means that I don't think it is worth the extra money now, especially considering the fact it has sealed burners.

If you want to be able to manually light the stovetop burners, you can do that with most gas ranges. Postings in other threads have identified a number of models where everything runs through a central electronic contoller and you cannot manually light burners. The ones that cannot be lit mannually I recall are: the Maytags with double gas ovens; the more expensive Electrolux gas stoves; and American Range's Performer stoves. As Poolmy says, download and read the manual before you buy. Get a PDF version and you can search the manual on the word "outage." That word will take you to the section which 99% of the time explains how to manually light your stove in the event of a power outage. If you do not find a reference to outage, then the model is one which cannot be lit manually and you do not want the stove. AR might be the only brand whose manuals forthrightly say you cannot manually light the burners during a power outage. If you are saying that you want a gas stove that can run totally off the electrical grid -- including running the oven, there are a number of choices. The ones I recall are: (a) Hotpoint has several models of 24" and 30" ranges which use a 9v battery for both oven and cooktop burners sold by Lowe's, Home Depot, Sears, etc., but may be a special order item); (b) Brown Stove Works is known hereabouts mainly for its Five Star line of pro-style ranges but it still makes old fashioned gas stoves which can be ordered with pilot ignition in sizes from 24" to 36" (check the website for vendors). (c) A company called Unique Gas Ranges for Off The Grid Living has several models that uses two 9v batteries per year. Sold through Backwoods Home Magazine and (I believe) the Lehmans website) and which might be available for direct purchase; (d) Peerless Premier has several pilot-based models from 24" to 36" wide, but reviews here but mostly bad. Costco.com carryied them for a while but discontinued the line after a lot of returns (sold by a variety of vendors as a special order item; (e) Summit has or has several pilot and battery ignition models in 24 to 36" sizes (try AJ Madison); (f) Tappan has a pilot ignition model. I saw one at our local Lowe's back in August. I believe the Tappan brand is owned by Electrolux-Frigidaire. With most gas stoves, you cannot light the oven burners manually because the have electronic thermostats. Much as a home heating furnace uses a thermostat to cycle the burners on and off and give even heat around a set temperature, electronic thermostats give modern gas stoves much better baking and roasting abilities than the older gas stoves. (They also give the gas stoves the ability to run reliabily at fairly low oven temps.) Some postings here at GW (and elswhere) have vehemently belly-ached about electronic thermostats being outrageous interference with personal liberty by the nanny state and a conspiracy of plaintiff lawyers protecting the terminally stupid. But electronic oven ignition is nothing of the sort. As I said, electronic thermostats are what allow the ovens in gas stoves to cycle on and off with enough precision to maintain relatively even heat and baking temperatures. You want an oven that can run off the grid with no thermostat --- it is called a gas bbq grill. A gas bbq actually can function as an oven about as well as the old gas ovens. As with the old gas ovens, you can even out heat with layer of unglazed quarry tile. In the old ovens, you put them on the oven floor; with my Weber gas bbqs, I put them on top of the steel splash bars that sit over the burners to catch and divert flare-up material (drippings) from the cooking grates. I did this last summer after my previous stove died and I was waiting for the new one to be delivered. To my surprise, I was able to bake some pretty good bread and a quiche. The new stove arrived qucikly enough that I never got around to trying it with cake, though. Alternatives to the above: (1) Buy an old pilot-operated a gas stove (OMG, vintage 1950's stuff is an antique?) (2) Buy an AGA cooker; (3) Look into tiling your kitchen, installing MUA anda fire-supression system, and check out a commerical stove with a salamander. (4) If you have a fireplace, install a woodstove and vent it through the chimney.

Directly from Honeywell- "A split flame pilot light with a .012 Nat gas orifice, consumes/produces 600 to 900 BTU's an hour, depending on pressures and setting." So a pilot light burning at 700 Btu's with a gas cost of $1.30 per Therm (Therm = 100,000 BtuÂs when the BTU content of a cubic foot of nat gas is 1000) = $0.0091 per hour, $0.2184 per day, $6.55 per month (30 days). You decide however, I recommend to keep it burning for two reasons: 1. Regardless of what type of appliance, the pilot light does a nice job keeping the appliance dry and slow down corrosion of all parts. 2. Spiders like to crawl in and plug them, resulting in a service call that will cost more than you saved. (Rusting from reason 1 will do the same thing)