High Speed Oven Energy Use Field Monitoring for the Commercial Foodservice Industry

Frontier Energy will conduct a field study which will characterize the energy use of rapid cook ovens (also known as high-speed ovens) in the commercial foodservice industry. This is an emerging technology commonly found in cafes, airports, and commissaries. These ovens use a combination of a convection fan, a conduction hotplate, and a microwave to cook foods extremely quickly. Additionally, rapid cook ovens are ‘ventless’ and some operations are replacing gas-fired ovens with rapid cook ovens in an effort to decommission exhaust hoods. Because of this pattern, rapid cook ovens have potential to be a retrofit decarbonization technology. In recent years, manufacturers have begun to implement more efficient technologies such as better insulation, automatic setback modes and more sophisticated controls into these ovens, and there is a research need to evaluate the real-world energy savings of these technologies. Further, there exists no public repository of field data for rapid cook ovens, so it’s difficult to characterize their energy use and operating patterns, which would be necessary for publishing a measure package or designing a utility energy efficiency measure. This study would address this need and could address some of the barriers to adoption of more efficient rapid cook ovens, such as end user awareness of these energy savings opportunities. This study would independently submeter the energy usage of 10 rapid cook ovens in various foodservice facilities to identify savings opportunities and operating patterns.