Ask the Home Remodeling Specialists…

WHICH COOKTOP IS MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT – GAS, ELECTRIC OR INDUCTION?

 

This may come as a shock to you, but the Perry house is not immune to appliance failures.  Recently the microwave oven and the cooktop have developed problems, and it doesn’t make sense to put money into 12+ year old appliances.

While out looking for a replacement cooktop, we got quite an education.  There are three types of cooktops available on the market: Gas, Electric and Induction. This is how they are different:

Gas: This type of cooktop has a burner on top and uses gas (LPG or PNG) to burn a flame that is used to heat a pot.

Electric: This type of cooktop has a coil that heats up due to resistance when current passes through it. As its name implies, it uses electricity to generate heat which makes a pot hot.

Induction: Although this type of cooktop uses electricity, it uses the magnetic property of steel to directly heat a pot.  Unlike other cooking methods, it does not use flames or a red-hot element to transfer heat to a pot. Thus it is considered more energy efficient. Also, it only heats the pot which is in direct contact, thus reducing the possibility of a burn injury.

The US Department of Energy did some boiling water tests to come up with the efficiency of various cooktops (Source: US DOE) and below is the result of the tests:

The efficiency mentioned above is based on the heat transferred to the pot kept on top of the cooktop. Please note that the efficiency also depends on the size of pot used compared to the size of the flame/heating surface. The numbers above are based on an ideal setup.

So what did I buy?  An induction cooktop.  I’ll let you know how we like it once it arrives in about two weeks and I install it.