Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
I wish this existed without the battery. Here in Norway most of us use electric. Gas is exotic.
But this top looks so damn good! I've longed for knobs and raised zones since I got my first induction stove top.
Induction ranges don't exist there?
They do not need battery in it. This is just a gimmick to make you need to pay for battery service or replacement. I would never buy an appliance like this that's dependant on a battery. It's frankly disgusting and terrible as shit for the environment.
Not sure what an induction range is. But we have two types of cooking solutions: The combined oven and cooktop. Here you have knobs. And then you have integrated stovetops and standalone ovens. You get combinations og classic metal coils that stick out or ceramic tops with coils or induction in the combined ones. Are these ranges? The integrated ones are usually induction, but I think you can get the other ceramic ones as well.
But with regards to batteries what I was trying to say was that there are no reasons for them in Norwegian kitchens. We are used to having huge breakers for the stovetops alone. Our stovetop has 240v 25A and the oven has 240v 15A.
240V at 15A power draw gives 6000 watts power available. Because this thing has an internal battery it can supply 10 kW of power at peak. That's a fairly substantial increase.
Do you need that kind of power for your stove? Well, I would say usually no, unless you are serious about your wok. Stir frying in a wok is just about the only type of cooking where most home stove tops are clearly inadequate (restaurant grade setups go up to 150000 BTU). If you don't have enough heat output you are basically just sauteing the food, not stir frying.
Well I guess that extra peak is cool if you are into stir frys then. But I've never thought our cooking top wasn't powerful enough. I guess sometimes when I've cooked something sous vide and needed a quick sear at as hot as possible, but then I've just used our barbequeue.
Also the battery makes it so deep. I would have to sacrifice a whole drawer for it. And I don't have enough storage space as it is.
Still waiting on that induction wok
The heat needs to travel up the sides for it to wok right
I have a hard time conceptualizing using a stove that puts out 4 times the energy of the best gas stoves. It's not like we need pans to get even hotter. I guess maybe that level of power would be only really used to heat up water to a boil? I guess it could be pretty hard on the cookware. I think it would be more efficient to have a insulated water boiler that just keeps water just below boiling all day long.
I don't think I've ever cooked on induction, though, so maybe I'm missing something. Either way, though, I'm glad this technology seems to be coming along
Yeah, it's an instant-boil capability.
If they made a wok version of the stove, it would allow something equivalent to commercial-kitchen stir-fries.
The big deals for most people are:
Apparently the battery is only good for "three meals". But the idea is not bad, just overpriced a lot.
How many meals are you cooking consecutively, lol?
Edit: ah, you're talking about during outages. Still, 3 isn't bad. It would be cool if it was set up to charge off DC power, too
This looks like something I can put on top of my gas stove, so I could have gas as a backup still.
That's down a lot from what was proposed earlier when they first announced
Don't know about the costs, but isn't rewiring cheaper in the long run?
Not if the stove (and its battery) last for several decades. Even with the higher cost of this stove as compared with other induction stoves, it's likely a cheaper choice for 10% to 20% of US households looking to get off gas.
Show me a battery that lasts decades..
A lot of the EV batteries are likely to last 20+ years.
What do you mean with "last" exactly?
Blatantly untrue
Appliances that run on higher voltages are more efficient. You may lose out on energy costs
It's a stove, which is usually a very small chunk of household energy consumption in the US. Heating and cooling tend to be the bulk of it, and where people concentrate on efficiency.
That's what I was thinking. My place isn't wired for 240v. I was initially excited. Then I saw the price and converted to Canadian dollars. It's been a while since I've priced it out, but I think it would be less expensive for me to put in 240v, get power to my shop, and buy a used electric stove. Obviously, I wouldn't have induction, but that's not something I actually care about.
I don't know how induction will ever be compatible with wok cooking. A huge part of it is keeping food moving by tossing it, and you would loose most of the heating by pulling the wok off the element
There are induction wok ranges for sale, and from what I can tell people are happy with them.
As an additional (future) option, I love the idea of creating biochar, capturing the resulting syngas, and purifying the syngas for use as a plug-and-play alternative to propane compatible with their existing cookware.
I think this is sound from ecological and social standpoints. Propane is basically a byproduct of fossil fuel refinement, and as that goes away, so too, will propane, leaving behind a ton of wasted cookware etc. including the embodied carbon in its manufacture. By replacing the propane with another gas that's a byproduct of sequestration rather than fossil emissions, we save the embodied carbon and financially incentivize sequestration, while the people with cultural attachments to gas cooking can continue on.
Syngas is wildly more poisonous than methane or propane. Going to have a tough time getting people to pipe that into their homes.
Hence why I said to purify it, and I only mentioned propane in the context of cooking, which is virtually if not always off-grid, so no piping.
Syngas is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Purifying it doesn't solve the major risks associated with having a lot of carbon monoxide around
Ah, looks like it's dedicated curved ranges with a corresponding wok; that makes sense.
Now I'm picturing it with a switch that detects when the wok leaves the induction element and turns on a heat gun instead
Seems perfect for the home metallurgist.
Building the future of home electrification
So, why a battery? It comes down to three main reasons:
Improve performance Make installation easy Pave the way towards resilient, efficient, fully-electrified home
All these points they make are bullshit.
How so?
I'm curious, what makes them inaccurate?
A stove is probably the last thing I'd try to put batteries in, but being able to make wok hei stir-fry without a propane burner is going to be uniquely appealing to some people.