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The power draw is pretty minimal with induction stoves for the most part as they're really efficient. If you are one of the unlucky few who have had to live with an electric resistance cooktop, then your power draw for equivalent "cooking" is going to be much lower.
Still requires a 240v/40A supply which is pretty hefty and wouldn't normally be in place if the kitchen was previously using gas. Also I'm not convinced regarding the lower power draw, I use a single induction plug-in cooktop at work occasionally and it will trip a 15a breaker after a while when running it on full power (boiling a pot of water for example).
It's all cool and nifty until your jaw drops when you see the electric bill.
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Originally Posted by LOVEROFNYC
NYCHA is all (utilities) inclusive, rent payment optional.
Right, the vast majority of NYCHA developments are master-metered and do not have submetering. The same goes for natural gas as well. On NYCHA's (and the taxpayers) side, a move towards induction stove can end up being a savings, though it leaves the greater issue of people in NYCHA housing not having skin in the game and not much incentive for residents to conserve energy which I think is a greater issue regardless of whether that's electricity or natural gas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bakamonogatari
Still requires a 240v/40A supply which is pretty hefty and wouldn't normally be in place if the kitchen was previously using gas. Also I'm not convinced regarding the lower power draw, I use a single induction plug-in cooktop at work occasionally and it will trip a 15a breaker after a while when running it on full power (boiling a pot of water for example).
That's a really good point with the 240V draw and how much the cost of upgrading a unit to run the required voltage for a multiburner range and presumably an oven to go with it.
What you're thinking about with the power draw needs a bit of context. The amount of draw can be high, so I should have phrased that as the draw needed to get a set amount of water to boiling in the same amount of time compared to an electric resistance stove. Certainly you can also have an electric resistance cooktop that also draws enough to flip the breaker, but for any specific amount of power draw, more of that electricity gets converted into useful heat for cooking. I probably should have couched that in language more about efficiency. An induction stove is very efficient compared to a gas stove in regards to converting electricity to useful cooking heat versus a gas stove converting gas to useful cooking heat. What you're seeing with tripping the breaker is that efficiency doesn't mean you can't have a higher draw at any point.
That boiling pot of water as your example also boils that water very quickly in comparison to most home gas ranges, right? With that, consider the fluid analogy for electricity/energy. That water needs a certain amount of energy to reach boiling point. In a simplified analogy, the amount of power output at any given moment whether induction, resistance, or gas is akin to the flow rate of a fluid. In that same analogy, the amount of energy used in total to heat that amount of water to boiling point is like all the amount of fluid coming out accumulated into a bucket and you can think of a larger basin the bucket's in getting the output that missed the bucket with the total energy expenditure being the combination of the fluid inside the bucket and outside of it in the basin. The induction stove's "flow" and output mostly makes it into that bucket while the gas stove generally mostly does not. That ratio of fluid inside the bucket and the fluid outside is essentially the efficiency. However, the induction stove's flow rate can simultaneously be better at directing itself into that bucket (aka higher efficiency) *and* have a higher flow rate which is what you're experiencing with tripping the 15A breaker (analogy sort of breaks down here since there's not usually a device that cuts off the flow when it gets too large) and also why that water boils much faster with the induction stove.
Now that's at point of use. If all your electricity is generated from natural gas, then you have the issue of how efficient was that conversion of natural gas into electricity in the first place which can run at a real world operating efficiency of 60% in a combined cycle generating plant, but also potentially much lower though the really poor efficiency plants of previous decades are mostly out-of-commission or have been somewhat upgraded. Of course, electricity is sort of like a common currency for energy in a lot of ways, so it's not necessarily the case that all your electricity is generated from natural gas, and even if it is, it's not necessarily going to stay that way as electricity generation by source over the last century or so has continuously gone through changes.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-21-2022 at 09:42 AM..
A watt of electricity is a watt of heat, no more, no less.
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