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> A cheap electric cooktop is a lot like a gas stove, except with electric heating coils instead of burners. Better for indoor air quality, doesn’t do that clic
by bambax 5y ago
> A cheap electric cooktop is a lot like a gas stove, except with electric heating coils instead of burners. Better for indoor air quality, doesn’t do that click-click-click thing, but less responsive.
No. Well, yes, a "cheap" electric cooktop that simply produces heat (coil or IR) is worse than burners, and less responsive. But that's not what you want. You want an induction cooktop: safe, efficient, beautiful, and more importantly, more responsive than burners.
- LesZedCB 5y agoand finer control - lower lows
- moistly 5y agoMuch discussion about induction cooktops here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30654693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30654693
- LunaSea 5y agoInduction cooktops are however not compatible with self-consumption of electricity produced by solar panels. The required draw is too high.
- pjc50 5y agoThat's a very categorical statement for a comparison of two quantities, both of which vary (cooktop power and solar power). And ultimately if you're using a lower-power cooktop it .. won't cook properly. The all-electrical all-self-produced setup probably isn't viable without a large enough battery and inverter.
- YATA0 5y agoI've ran our induction range on our solar panels for about five years now. This is news to me.
- LunaSea 5y agoWhat solar capacity did you have installed? If I remember correctly, my comment was based on an average household with about 4 to 5 KW installed in western Europe. This represents about 12 panels which is roughly the maximum amount of panels a regular house has space for.
- YATA0 5y agoRoughly 15kW, so quite a bit more than that.
- Zanfa 5y agoThat’s still enough for a peak of 2kw for an average induction range. Granted you can’t probably run a heater and a vacuum on full power at the same time.
- sokoloff 5y agoIf the peak power is only 2kW (8.3A @ 240V), why do most induction cooktops have a 40-50A beaker (32-40A/7.5-9.6kW continuous)? The first one I looked the specs up on at my home center has a 4.8kW largest element and 8.6kW total. https://images.thdstatic.com/catalog/pdfImages/d9/d92c8678-a46e-4ae2-b66a-55ed28b52236.pdf https://images.thdstatic.com/catalog/pdfImages/d9/d92c8678-a...
- dTal 5y agoYeah, 2kW seems low for a multi-burner stove. That gets you an electric kettle or a large toaster. Maybe a single element might draw that.
- Zanfa 5y ago2kw per element is plenty of power, though you could definitely find more powerful ones. In my 3 years of owning an induction cooktop, I don't think I've ever had more than 1 element at full power at one time, it's really only useful for bringing water to boil, waaaaaaaay to much heat for anything else. I'm not even sure if my entire house has a breaker for more than 32A.
- jgtrosh 5y agoInduction is way more energy efficient than electric though (and therefore draw less), so what are you suggesting?
- LunaSea 5y agoYou are talking about overall power consumption, not the instantaneous draw which is the one I was thinking about.
- avianlyric 5y agoWhat do you mean by instantaneous draw?
- EricE 5y agoIf you are concerned about instantaneous draw you can always start low and ramp up. You don't always have to start out with every burner on high!
- Ballas 5y agoOnly if you use the higher settings, which you typically don't unless you are boiling water. Source: I have induction and solar and my stove-top is 90% solar (with BESS). The oven is a different story. Another thing to keep in mind: with gas about half the energy heats the air and flows around the pot or pan, so it ends up being about 50% efficient. But with all said, the carbon monoxide buildup issue was what swayed me in the end.
- LunaSea 5y agoI definitely think you are right about efficiency. I was rather talking about the required instantaneous draw which is usually too high for an average household's Solar setup.
- biztos 5y agoIs there a simple trick to make this work? I’m planning to install solar and was thinking around 3KW with battery backup. I definitely want induction cooking. Should I get more capacity? Bigger batteries? Fewer burners? [Edit: bigger batteries seems to be the answer, also because of cooking at night.]
- namibj 5y agoIf you can get the required parts in the single quantities you'd need, you may want to consider a battery voltage suitable for the induction stove to run directly off of, so you wouldn't need the dance with a bigger inverter and that. Just need a grid-powered charger for the battery to replace the sun with if you worry about running out of electricity to cook.
- biztos 5y agoThanks, I will keep voltage in mind. I have ample wind so my long-term plan is solar plus small windmills on the roof. For bigger cooking sessions I will have an outdoor grill, might add some burners too. This is Spain so big LPG tanks for the home are totally common. [Edit: it's off the grid, only gets water, and I want to keep it that way in principle.]
- chii 5y agoWouldn't a battery bank/wall be the buffer that would solve this problem? The battery bank could be supplied by an electric vehicle, plugged in when at rest for such a purpose.
- LunaSea 5y agoDon't quote me on this but usually, regular batteries usually don't allow for such an instantaneous draw. Lithium batteries like you find in electric cars probably can support this but it does require a certain additional upfront investment.
- chii 5y agofair enough - i did just assume that this could be built "easily".
- kwhitefoot 5y agoIt can be built easily, but perhaps not yet cheaply. Just buy a Tesla PowerWall or similar.
- jrapdx3 5y agoThat may be true but gas cooking isn't available everywhere. So if electricity-based cooking is necessary, induction is likely more efficient than conventional resistance coils. In our kitchen we have both. Items heat faster with less heating of nonessential surrounding areas vs. standard burners. My guess is cooking aside solar generation is probably not going to be by itself a sufficient source of household power for the foreseeable future. In any case optimizing use of electric energy requires taking advantage of the best available technologies.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoNeither is gas, or I assume resistive electric. An energy storage system solves that problem.
- hadlock 5y agoInduction cooktops are wildly popular on solar powered sailboats, do you have any sort of information to back this claim up? There are tens if not hundreds of sailing vlogs on youtube who are exclusively using induction cooktops because they don't want to carry propane onboard.
- BatteryMountain 5y agoThis doesn't sound right (correct me if wrong)... but we've ran a small one plate cooker off of a camping solar system + battery kit & off of a petrol generator and it all seemed fine and working as normal. Usually when putting heavy load on the generator you can hear it work harder, but with this plate it barely makes a difference. I have to note that it is rated at 2000w at max setting (6), but due to it being so potent, we've never had it set to more than 3 out of 6, anything above that is way too aggressive. So make it 1000w typical draw.
- jvvw 5y agoWe have solar panels on medium sized house in the UK (15 panels - half east, half west roughly) and an induction hob and use it without needing power from the grid!
- bocytron 5y agoI would like to know what is your point here? You can't consume locally produced gas either, can you? Or are you comparing with non-induction electrical stove?
- Angostura 5y agoI find that quite surprising. I don't have an induction hob, but I do have an electric fan oven, and I find my batteries, charged from solar cope with that just fine, or a 3kW electric kettle.
- idontknowifican 5y agolower draw than IR or coil
- ZetaZero 5y agoInduction stoves are anywhere from 1200W to 3800W for the larger ones at full power. Looks like the size just needs to be considered when building it out. https://www.inductioncooked.com/how-much-electricity-does-induction-cooking-use https://www.inductioncooked.com/how-much-electricity-does-in...
- namibj 5y agoThey are particularly suitable to be run directly off of a battery with no inverter, because they are essentially a switched mode power supply with the pan as the secondary winding. They already have a rectifier front end.
- dustymcp 5y agoI dont find them better to be honest ive had more than a few, lifetime on them are very short compared to a regular stove.
- rocqua 5y agoI have one, and I love it with one exception: woks. The induction stove only heats the bottom plate. Whereas with a gas stove around a large wok, there is a lot of convection heating the thin walls of the wok as well.
- UncleMeat 5y agoThe winning strategy for serious wok cooking is an outdoor propane burner. Basically no indoor range has the heat output you actually want for the restaurant-style wok cooking.
- EricE 5y agoAlso if you are performing true restaurant style wok cooking you doubly want to be outdoors for the offgassing/smoke. Restaurants have hoods that are paired with make-up air systems. That 600CFM (being generous!) "hood" built into your over the range microwave is NOT going to be able to keep up with normal cooking, let alone real wok cooking! The lack of adequate kitchen ventilation is pretty underrated by most people. Picked up a WYND Halo indoor air quality monitor out of general curiosity and was astonished at just how quickly indoor air can sour when cooking if you don't have adequate ventilation. I cook a lot more outdoors than I used to now!
- JJMcJ 5y agoSimilar issues for blackened food not such a big fashion now. Ordinary domestic kitchens did not have the ventilation to do it properly.
- unkoman 5y agoKenji Lopez-Alt has a good hack for this that uses a torch https://youtu.be/u2MJzEuI0vI?t=481 https://youtu.be/u2MJzEuI0vI?t=481 Not the same, but good enough for me.
- neurostimulant 5y agoFirst time seeing someone cook a fried rice with a butane torch. Is this actually work?
- prometheus76 5y agoDownsides of induction burners: bottom of pan heats up very quickly, but heat propagates through the pan slowly, so food is prone to burn when you are adjusting for a certain level of simmer. Limited heat settings left me often wishing for more nuance, especially in lower temperatures. Hysteresis. You can see this by putting your saucepan with water to 350, then lowering it to 212 when it reaches a boil. It will rapidly cycle between boiling and not boiling, making simmering very difficult. My particular induction burner has one setting for 140F (way too low) and the next setting is 212F. Where's simmer? It does heat water up faster than a conventional burner, so I use it for cooking the pasta while I make the sauce on a conventional gas stovetop. I also use it when temperature control isn't important, but that's not very often in cooking.
- kumarvvr 5y agoI see that as an opportunity for business. Induction heat transfer is basically generating a magnetic field in the bottom coil, which is then picked up by the vessel, currents induced in it causing the heat. Cheap induction stoves emulate lower power levels by turning the heat on and off, averaging the heat. One solution is to use a thick bottom vessel that retains enough heat between the cycles to allow simmering. Or buy a smooth controlled stove. But I dont think there are any such ones in the market.
- alaties 5y agoWould cast iron pots and pans count as thick-bottomed in this case? I usually use these with electric stoves since they retain heat pretty well. They take a while to warm up though, so there's both time and energy lost in that warming process.
- prometheus76 5y agoI primarily use cast iron for cooking, and it does help with the hysteresis, but I still have a problem with the bottom of the pan being way too hot and tending to burn food.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
- tomp 5y ago> You want an induction cooktop: safe, efficient, beautiful, and more importantly, more responsive than burners. and loud I prefer non-induction electric.
- EricE 5y agoLoud?
- foobarian 5y agoI had a chance to cook on a friend's induction stove. It beeped angrily any time I lifted the pan to shake it around. And I had trouble finding the touch buttons on the flat surface due to lack of contrast and the food bits on the surface. I get the principle but the UX leaves a lot to be desired. Other than boiling water it's a step down for me.
- EricE 5y agoNot all beep crazily like that - and not as many as I like have physical controls. I loathe the obsession with capacitive touch dominating design these days :p
- linsomniac 5y agoAnd, Induction is much easier to clean and keep clean. Food does not burn onto the cooktop, the cooktop is solid surface, and temps stay lower. Boil something over? Move the pot, wipe it with a towel or sponge, put the pot back. Or put a paper towel or regular towel down between the pan an the cooktop, you can boil water without burning the towel. Also, it throws off way less heat than a gas burner. Almost all of it goes into the pan, where gas tends to throw a lot up around the pan. I've never run into the problem mentioned by another in this thread about cycling when simmering or burning. My range is a $3500 Samsung range, more than a cheap electric, less than many gas, but not exactly cheap. Well worth it for me. However, one downside I didn't expect is: My inductive range is more disposable. Where a regular range, if it breaks, you can probably have a repair guy come by and do some simple troubleshooting and identify a burner element or knob that has failed... The inductive cooktop the repair guys tend to just want to replace the whole thing, to the tune of $750 parts, plus labor. At which point they start recommending you just replace the range, because most people don't want to spend more than a cheap range on a repair. A year ago my range had two of the burners stop working. Thankfully, it was a well known problem, a blown solder joint on one of the boards deep in the cooktop. I was able to repair it for $0 in 3 hours (my son was helping, probably could have done it in half the time if I wasn't also teaching him), and we were back in business. But no repairman would have wanted to spend 90 minutes on a "maybe" repair with no warranty and another 90 minute service call or potentially $300 board replacement or $750 cooktop replacement, and an angry customer because their fix didn't work. No problem for a DIYer.