Induction vs gas - Experiment

anon_ymous

Officer_Dibble said:

I'm not sure I'd bother experimenting. I'd just conclude that as gas is a third of the price of electricity then even if induction is theoretically more efficient, the gas will still be cheaper. I say theoretically as we've got a single gas burner next to an induction hob (we bought the house with that installed, I'm not one for such extravegance!) the induction hob shows no sign of efficiency at all - the gas burner is superior in every way.

By "no sign of efficiency" do you mean in terms of pure cost? And not say energy? 

anon_ymous

Officer_Dibble said:

It might be that our pans aren't up to it, and I think the largest of the induction rings is broken (it doesn't seem to get above medium heat - level 5, even if you turn it up to 9). We've got 4 rings of different sizes on ours, but the smallest 2 are just puny. They're slow, boil over too easily and incredibly annoyingly all the rings turn off as soon as a bit of water lands on the surface. I don't understand the perceived difficulty of cleaning round the gas burner, it's every bit as easy as scraping the induction surface.

Oh, and have you ever seen a professional kitchen with induction hobs? Chefs use gas. There's a reason...

Chefs do also use induction ones but they tend to be in fancier restaurants 

I half suspect that chefs mostly don't use induction due to costs. Chefs that use induction tend to rave about how amazing they are 

Exiled_Tyke

Officer_Dibble said:

It might be that our pans aren't up to it, and I think the largest of the induction rings is broken (it doesn't seem to get above medium heat - level 5, even if you turn it up to 9). We've got 4 rings of different sizes on ours, but the smallest 2 are just puny. They're slow, boil over too easily and incredibly annoyingly all the rings turn off as soon as a bit of water lands on the surface. I don't understand the perceived difficulty of cleaning round the gas burner, it's every bit as easy as scraping the induction surface.

Oh, and have you ever seen a professional kitchen with induction hobs? Chefs use gas. There's a reason...

Watch Masterchef. They now use induction. Chefs are increasingly leaving gas behind

Solarchaser

My only comment would be that with boiling such a small amount of water, you will use a very small amount of gas, and since most modern meters read in m3 of gas, to get the kwh out of that you pretty much multiply by 11 (there's an actual calculation on your bill usually, it's roughly 11, but you will need more accurate numbers) on the tiny bit your gas meter has moved.

You would get a more accurate result in my opinion by boiling say 4 litres in a soup pan for instance as you will use alot more energy,  the more you use, the more you will move the gas meter and so the less room for visual error

anon_ymous

Solarchaser said:

My only comment would be that with boiling such a small amount of water, you will use a very small amount of gas, and since most modern meters read in m3 of gas, to get the kwh out of that you pretty much multiply by 11 (there's an actual calculation on your bill usually, it's roughly 11, but you will need more accurate numbers) on the tiny bit your gas meter has moved.

You would get a more accurate result in my opinion by boiling say 4 litres in a soup pan for instance as you will use alot more energy,  the more you use, the more you will move the gas meter and so the less room for visual error

Thanks.. I'll boil four litres of water in a soup pan instead 

propnut

When I redid my kitchen (or rather the wife's kitchen as she reminds me often) I had the gas capped off and installed an induction hob. We have found it wayyyyyy better than the gas. Pots heat up almost instantly and the hob surface never gets hot. You can cook for an hour, take the pot off and put your hand straight on the plate without getting burned. We still had young kids and a very stupid cat so this was a major safety feature for us. Also if left on, it will automatically detect there are no pots on the stove and turn itself off. The only thing is we had to buy induction compatible (i.e. iron based) cookware as aluminium is not magnetic. We will never go back to gas especially now I have solar and despite global gas wholesale prices going down we are told that our bills won't be in order to fund "green energy".

anon_ymous

propnut said:

When I redid my kitchen (or rather the wife's kitchen as she reminds me often) I had the gas capped off and installed an induction hob. We have found it wayyyyyy better than the gas. Pots heat up almost instantly and the hob surface never gets hot. You can cook for an hour, take the pot off and put your hand straight on the plate without getting burned. We still had young kids and a very stupid cat so this was a major safety feature for us. Also if left on, it will automatically detect there are no pots on the stove and turn itself off. The only thing is we had to buy induction compatible (i.e. iron based) cookware as aluminium is not magnetic. We will never go back to gas especially now I have solar and despite global gas wholesale prices going down we are told that our bills won't be in order to fund "green energy".

On for sure. I'm absolutely with you on that. I will get induction regardless but also I figure this is a cheap experiment, and it's a cheap enough experiment to see if it'd be worth also doing it at my parent's house for example (ie: if you at the very least get parity with gas)