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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree, though I did somewhat regularly singe the hair on my knuckles. A lot of the heat from a gas burner goes up the side of the pan. And turning on a vent fan can suck a surprising amount of heat away from the pan. That does kinda suck since gas isn't really very powerful to begin with.

I switched recently to induction and I'm very happy. I did have to relearn some cooking habits, of course, because induction is so much faster and more powerful than gas. The instant temperature change is super handy, too. Gas is relatively fast, too, but still slow compared to induction.

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> The instant temperature change is super handy

It's amazing to me to see us careening towards a future of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling every household's electricity usage - but we're not doing anything to ensure the capacity is there to handle the demand. Every new power plant, dam, nuclear, etc is met with fierce opposition...

Induction uses a tremendous amount of electricity, and is expensive to operate. So are the other current trendy items, such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.

We have no way to support all this, even if they were objectively better (and the fact that there is debate around this subject proves just the opposite).

It's also strange to see the duality of complaining about things like bitcoin wasting electricity, while we also advocate for massive increases in consumption everywhere else.

For now, Induction ranges are a thing for those privileged enough to be able to afford them, all the peripherals required to operate them (cookware, etc), and operational expenses.

You're somehow ignoring the fact that natural gas is ... an energy source. Cooking uses energy, period, whether it's delivered in a pipe or a wire. The difference is that electricity _can_ be generated in a carbon-neutral way, but methane can't.

The other underlying question is about the conversion efficiency of, e.g., natural gas to electricity to heat (generation station -> house -> induction stove) vs directly burning gas at the stove. And the answer is -- induction often wins out, because gas stoves are pretty inefficient (they let a lot of heat energy bypass the pan). And it wins from an indoor air quality perspective. Where it may not win is cost, depending on the relative prices of gas and electricity where you live. But full electrification of your house allows you to save the costs of the monthly gas hookup and may reduce insurance costs.

I don’t necessarily agree nor disagree with your position. However

> save the costs of the monthly gas hookup

For anyone wondering how much a common gas (propane) stove costs: I have a 100 gallon propane tank that cost ~$300 to fill and lasts multiple years without a refill.

My whole-house generator also runs off the same propane tank. So I refill it maybe once a year (where we average 1-2 days without power per year).

One unspoken benefit of gas: it works without electricity.

I hate the inside air pollution, though.

I could see myself maybe trying induction. I could never switch ti electric. Personal preference but when I turn on a stove I don’t have patience to wait for it to warm up.

Funny.. here in Pennsylvania, that 100 gallon tank is over $800 to fill and lasts only half the winter. Here I was thinking we had low propane costs.

> lasts only half the winter

Are you also running your heat off the tank? Because it sounds like your parent isn't.

In Pittsburgh, my summertime natural gas bill is about $25 - That's with a gas stove, gas, water heater, and gas dryer. Of that, $14.50 is just the cost to be hooked up to gas. IOW, the connection fee is substantially higher than the cost of the energy I use to cook.

(My winter time bill is much higher; we heat the house with a gas boiler.)

But there's $174/year of savings available if we went all-electric. Which we won't do any time soon, alas.

You won't be saving with eclectic though - since in majority of the US electric is more expensive per unit of power than natural gas.

There's really no reality where you save $14.50 per month by switching to full electric. Rather, your electric bill will skyrocket.

It's more expensive per unit power but heat pumps are more efficient than natural gas boilers. I can't easily retrofit, but a very high SEER heat pump comes out to a similar annual cost as my existing 96% efficient natural gas boiler. But only a very high efficiency one; a middle of the road heat pump loses, partly because I have a very high efficiency condensing boiler and partly because PA has fairly affordable gas rates.

Induction uses less electricity than conventional resistance electric stoves, which have been around for a long time. The power usage is high but generally the stove is only on for maybe 15 minutes for most meals. Longer cooking times are more commonly done in an oven.

If you really wanted to cut down on energy used by households then the single biggest thing is making sure all homes are properly insulated to cut down on both heating and cooling.

Electric vehicles are an actual concern, but the issue there can be largely mitigated by making sure they're primarily charged off peak which is also something we have done for a long time with electric water heaters.

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