I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place.
For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot of energy before it even arrives in your home.
An electric kettle has an efficiency of about 80%, with gas stove around 40%. Assuming the cost of transportation is approximately equal for gas and electricity, that means using the gas stove is about as efficient as using the electric kettle, if you assume (most of) the electricity comes from a gas-fired plant.
In the winter, the gas stove will be more efficient since all the heat that doesn't go into your food, heats up the room (heating is typically also based on gas in the Netherlands, so this is basically free energy).
> Combined with passive cooking it could save real money
Again, I don't think this is true. Currently the energy market is fucked up because of the Ukraine war, but up to recently a cubic meter of gas cost around 1 euro, which produces roughly 10 kWh of energy, versus a kWh of electricity cost around 40 cents. That means that on a per-kWh basis, gas costs only a quarter of electricity. So even if the electric kettle is twice as efficient as the gas stove, it is still twice as expensive.
In countries where most electricity is generated by burning coal (like Poland, for example) there is also an environmental cost, since coal-fired plants emit more CO2 per joule than gas-fired plants.
YMMV based on local energy prices obviously, but I don't think it's straightforwardly true that electric kettles are always more efficient or more environmentally friendly than gas stoves, if you look at it holistically.
Compare to a stovetop where there's a big heavy pot between the element and the water, and it's not in complete contact with it. Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.
You’re describing resistive stovetops, not induction ones where the heating element is the bottom of the pot itself.
> Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.
These things under the glass do not heat anything. They are there to induce some electric current in the bottom of the pan you put on top, which actually does the heating.
Glass infrared cookers also exist, my parents had one back in the 90's before induction was much of a thing. It was touted as easy to clean (and looks cool)
They are mostly historical curiosities now, right? Not as cheap as simple resistive cookers, and worse in about all respects than induction ones.
They're awful though, I've only got one because I'm renting. The old school exposed spiral element ones are the best non induction electric stoves imo.
The efficiency loss of the electric kettle also gets converted into heat that heats up your home, energy doesn't just disappear.
So it is "heat your house by X at price of the gas heating" vs "heat your house by X at price of electric heating". And the price of old school resistive heating, not the more efficient heat pump.
And gas stove kettle is ~40% efficient but you get the other 60% back as heat in the surroundings, so the entire process is ~100% efficient.
Assuming you need that waste heat of course. In the summer that 60% inefficiency really is an inefficiency.
My last energy bill (including taxes and fees) is showing $0.124 per kWh electricity, and $0.62 per cubic meter of gas.
And yes, electricity prices in Europe are crazy right now. You can see some graphs here that show how enormous the spikes are compared to years of relative stability (no need to read the text; the graphs speak for themselves, and the y-axis starts at 0!)
Electricity: https://www.overstappen.nl/energie/stroomprijs/
Gas: https://www.overstappen.nl/energie/gasprijzen/
So apparently I slightly misremembered the prices; those graphs show that in 2020 the average gas price was about 84 cents per m3 (or about 8.4 cents per kWh assuming 10 kWh per m3), or 23 cents per kWh of electricity. That's closer to 1:3 than 1:4 on a per-kWh basis, but the general argument still holds that it seems like cooking on gas is cheaper than cooking on electricity.
I doubt most countries are as detailed as places I've lived in the US (Oregon, California, Washington) where I can look up exactly what type/% of resource was used to produce electricity.
Fingers crossed that this Russia debacle pushes Europe into a greener energy posture without much pain for its people over the next few years.
Your assumption that "the cost of transportation is approximately equal for gas and electricity" is probably not accurate, given that while the infrastructure costs are probably similar, the cost of the energy used in the compressors to pipe the gas around is likely quite a bit higher than transmission losses (around me at least, the service fees on the bill if you have gas were at least 50% higher than electricity last I heard).
You really don't want to be getting much of your heating from a gas stove (or unflued gas heater) not just because of the possibility of carbon monoxide formation, but because NOx and SOx produced by burning gas is actually a health risk (primarily asthma for kids, cardiovascular for adults).
Most households I know don't even own a kettle. Not a stovetop one, not an electric one.
If you were to ask most Americans why they don't have an electric kettle at home they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because they don't need a kettle.
Of course we do! Europeans don't all have microwave ovens? How do you warm up leftovers?
And yes, I drink tea daily with microwaved water.
I know in chem labs we used to use little chunks of ceramic for test tubes, but those aren't desirable in your tea.
This appears to be a microwave setting. I don't see how that would provide a non smooth surface
For superheating to occur, you need very pure water in a smooth container with no imperfections. Tap water in most places cannot be superheated because it contains too many minerals, and most ceramic cups aren't smooth enough to prevent boiling.
If you're making tea, an easy way to prevent superheating is to drop the bag in the water before you heat it. Another way is to put a wooden stirrer in the cup.
There's a mythbuster video here where they show water being superheated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0, but note that they use distilled water (which nobody drinks) in a Pyrex container (which nobody uses). And they actually use a mug of tap water as a control.
edit: as far as 'nobody' using Pyrex, my preferred container for heating water is a big Pyrex measuring cup.
Eh, I've had it happen many times at home. A coffee mug of water comes out of the microwave with just a hint of bubbles. Add sugar/tea/instant coffee and the whole thing instantly bubbles up and spills.
For a fixed amount of water, you can learn the time and not have to pull out your instant-read thermometer.
The beans you use are more important than the brewing method - if you use a giant tub of stale Folgers it probably won't be great. But grind you own decent beans and a drip machine can be fantastic.
I find pour over to be one of the easiest methods in amortized time. It takes three minutes to make a cup but the clean up time is only another 30 seconds—-throw away the paper filter and rinse the dripper.
But as mentioned I don't really have a horse in this race to begin with. Drink what makes you happy however you brew it. :)
Espresso and similar pressure based brewing (Moka Pot) is far superior with equal beans. Tastes way better, more flexibility in creating different drinks, very fast to brew, etc . If it’s too concentrated or hard to drink an espresso shot then you dilute it (for all you black-coffee drinkers, it’s ok to use milk, it’s still coffee).
I drink coffee in different ways in different days. If I want a large amount in the morning I go for a drip coffee or french press, the taste is smoother and caffeine content higher. If I want to taste the fullness of the beans I use a moka at home.
I don't see other methods of brewing as objectively better or worse, it depends on the result you expect or want, some days I want an espresso in the morning, some days I want a lot more caffeine, etc.
Also, I just drink coffee, I don't make drinks or turned coffee into a hobby.
These things usually serve "near-boiling" water, somewhere around 95 C. This is fine for some cases - e.g. making ramen - but not appropriate for many kinds of tea.
I have such a tap, and I also have an electric kettle. The tap is mostly used to prefill pots with near-boiling water for cooking, so as to not wait for so long for the stove to do it. The kettle is used for tea and coffee.
They do sell them here, people buy them, they are usually tea drinkers.
I don't understand this sentence, I would much rather waste some ground coffee beans and water than plastic.
Just because they both heat water doesn’t make them similar.
I've since switched to a Zojirushi water boiler which I adore, especially after learning my keurig wasn't getting hot enough to really brew the tea well.
French press, pour over, chemx are all niche.
electric kettle
french press for coffee
tea kettle for tea
French press coffee.
Instant coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, etc.
Heating water for instant soups, etc.
I'm mostly a coffee drinker, and use a bean to cup machine for that. But I still use my kettle a good bit, because it's quicker to boil the kettle and then pour into the pan and bring back to the boil than bringing cold water to the boil in the pan. I've got a 3kW kettle, though, if I had a 1100W one I wouldn't do that because it _wouldn't_ be quicker.
Source: have a 110V kettle and a gas cooktop with very large burners, still use the aforementioned trick.
In the other hand the US kettle beat the crap out of our old gas range, and even the good range is not nearly as fast as a crappy electric kettle in germany, which clocks in at 4 min.
If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.
For drinking straight up, hard water tastes better. At least to me. Perhaps because that's what I grew up with in central Europe.
Btw, the Romans also built their towns preferably in places with hard water.
It works really well and doesn't leave the same smell. When I'd previously used vinegar I'd had to boil another round of water and throw it away just to clean the kettle from the vinegar itself, but with citric acid there's no need (just don't drink the citric acid, it tastes like acid :)).
I use vinegar all the time, put in something like 50 ml to the remaining hot water just after making a tea. After a few minutes you can just rinse it and let it evaporate, 5 more mins and the smell is totally gone.
If it gets deposited, it means that it’s not in the water any longer, or at least the concentration in the water has lowered. What you can taste is already in the water before you boil it and does not come from the kettle (well, in kettles that have been used normally with normal water).
If it bothers you, just boiling a bit of slightly diluted vinegar will get rid of it.
> If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.
Yes, these are terrible at conducting heat.
I use it daily for tea and coffee (Aeropress). And now, thanks to this thread, I may use it to speed up my pasta water boiling.
Moka pots are much better. Your French press will start letting the coffee powder through at some point. I use these: https://www.rommelsbacher.de/en/coffee-tea-co/espresso-maker....
I do recommend it though. Lots more options for coffee drinks.
Personally I find french press too grainy, so at home I use aeropress, but when out prefer a properly done pour over filtered coffee. Black of course.
If it broke tonight I don't know that I'd bother replacing it tomorrow. I'd probably go a while before I got another kettle. It might even take someone gifting me one before I bother getting one.
Sure, it's marginally faster boiling water than my stove. It's about as fast as my microwave (which is insane at 1650W). It's definitely more efficient, but the break even on that is measured in years probably for even a cheap kettle and decades for this fancy one I have.
I just don't really drink many hot drinks and my microwave does just about as good of a job for getting things hot.
https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/tea_kettles/cp...
I only went to an Airbnb once that didn't have a kettle, so I Amazon'd one and just left it there.
I've been in over a hundred different hotels in the United States. East coast, West coast, Midwest, Rockies, deep South, South Atlantic coast, pretty much every region. I've probably only had a kettle a handful of times. Nearly universally a drip coffee maker, but practically never a kettle.
Note I'm not talking about the machine with the glass carafe on a small burner with a basket above it. That's a coffee maker in US terms, not an electric kettle.
It's a pretty universal item in any Canadian home and possibly even dorm room.
(Us Americans tend to optimize for coffee over tea. If something also works for tea, that’s a happy coincidence, but not intentional.)
> they won't say "because I only have 120V outlets in the kitchen." They'll say it is because they don't need a kettle.
Well no they wouldn't say that, unless they have experience of 240v perhaps.
They might reasonably say that it's too slow. Or maybe they're aware that kettles are 'just slow' and so arrange their lives so that they don't need a kettle, in which case they would say "I don't need a kettle".
No idea where this dumb myth comes from - kettles are not hard to find in the US, they work fine - there is a ton of demand it is just relatively miniscule.
I think it’s a hangover from when it was true - fairly recently in a human-lifespan timescale. I moved to the SF Bay Area from the UK 20 years ago, and had to buy a weird kettle from Amazon. None of the nearby stores had a decent one. That’s definitely not true now though.
All those 1800+ watt hair dryers that are used very commonly in the U.S. are wondering where you got your wattage limit from.
https://news.energysage.com/how-many-watts-does-a-hair-dryer...
[1] https://www.csemag.com/articles/understanding-overcurrent-pr...
I reply with a very commonly used device that uses over 63% more power than 1100W showing that obviously isn't the reason the U.S. doesn't use tea kettles.
And you reply with essentially, "Oh, but that's because the hair dryer isn't used continuously for 3 hours". Did you think a tea kettle is used for 3 hours continuously?
Why would a manufacturer bother trying to prove discontinuous draw when they can just current limit, use the same element they do everywhere else with the same resistance, and not worry about it?
Because that is what was being discussed.
Most sources I can find indicate the usual (but not maximum) draw of US electric kettles 1500W, and checking a few popular models confirms that 1500W is common.
It does take longer to boil, but it's like 2 min compared to 1 min.
I survive.
I have the same complaint about a ricecooker. It's perfectly easy to cook rice in a pot. Sure it's convenient to use the automated device, but it's wasteful.
Wash your rice. Throw in cold pot with 1:1 ratio of rice to water, + a bit extra to account for evaporation[1]. Bring to a full boil. As soon as it's boiling, drop the heat to the lowest setting and cover your pot as tight as you can and let it steam itself until ready. When ready, fluff it immediately.
[1]: the precise amount extra depends on your setup, tbh… how tight your lid seal is, how much surface area your saucepan exposes, etc. but usually an extra 25% will be about right
The most efficient (and fastest) way is an induction hob with copper disc pan. Something that Technology Connections didn't include in his video.
See some test here: https://youtu.be/EBlyuahlplI
(Still nominally at 230 Volt, but it's not quite the same as two-phase power.)
You're not heating the water directly, you're heating it through a piece of metal. The wasted energy is heating that piece of metal up to more than 100 deg C. A surprising amount of energy lost there.
If you use the induction hob you're only heating the metal that you actually need to heat to do the cooking.
For us in northern climates, none of this energy is really wasted during winter. But many of us now have heat pumps, which are more efficient than resistive heating.
While the time savings is modest, if you have an electric kettle it's a no brainer to prefer that over gas.
Though induction stovetops can be faster yet, and just as clean.
I would still rather use a nice induction range, but it is possible to get decent efficiency out of gas.
Someone who wants to go electric badly enough to spend thousands of dollars installing a high-current power outlet is not likely to balk at the cost of new pans.
(Gee, this thread got dark. Like carbon-black dark)
https://www.rei.com/product/139472/toaks-titanium-windscreen
https://www.msrgear.com/stoves/stove-accessories/heat-exchan...
Adam Ragusea did a water boiling comparison and the gas stove was dumping so much energy into the air around the pot that his thermometer melted [0]. I just don't see how any pan geometry could extract much of the energy from the quickly rising hot gas produced by combustion.
You still of course do have the problem that home rangehoods usually aren't powerful enough to create enough air-flow to properly deal with the NOx and SOx produced by burning gas, which turns out to be a big health risk...
There may well be a problem with a poorly designed range hood and exhaust that inevitably isn’t captured. And people might not like using the hoods all the time.
My partner, who cooks more, bemoans that our new apartment has electric. Grew up using gas and claims that it’s better for cooking. I prefer not to intentionally dump gas into our house and welcome the minor benefit of energy efficiency.
Funny how different people see the world (and technology).
Induction is on par with gas in controllability - and although there are some downsides, the upsides (so easy to clean!) Make it worth it (imo). I'm not saying that because big induction paid me to either.
The lowest setting on some ranges might be a High setting on others.
Gas is far superior to electric heating elements because of the speed at which it can change temperature, and makes flambeing a cinch.
That being said Induction ranges are several orders of magnitude superior to gas. As are ovens with humidity and air flow control.
I've never owned an induction cooktop but I'd imagine the flat surface wouldn't have that problem (assuming the pans aren't warped).
A large electric burner is 2400-3600 watts, a large gas burner can be 8-16 kw. I think induction could get better power delivery than gas with time.
You can get skillful with electric, you just have to see 30 seconds into the future and anticipate the thermal lag and overshoot when adjusting burner power.
In my experience living with an AEG induction stove with a peak single burner power output of 3.7kW - apart from I never did any cooking (apart from boiling water) which needed that level of power for more than a few tens of seconds. The gas stove in my current house felt underpowered in comparison.
It's not really "better" it's simply easier keep a constant heat. Most electrical cooking stuff works on intermittent on-and-off cycles. An electric oven power up, then start cycling it's internal resistences let's say 10" powerd 5" off, then again 10" powerd etc. Some users here show me in a video an induction plate who use "mini-coils" who seems rotating constantly nearly nullifying such cycle effects on food cooking, but most other electric gears choose a "simpler" approach for their OEM.
Personally I'm all electric since around 8/10 years or so, I've made a habit and not a professional cook (while remaining a professional eater) but I understand those who dislike the initial impact...
Beside that: most actual tech is developed in crappy ways, most product explicitly made not to last and not to ensure evolution with plugged-in recycling but simply ensure a constant buy of new gears who are just crappy like the ones they substitute. Now most people might not realize that as well as a techie but anyone feel that. So...
And that’s just from a practical, cooking point of view, without mentioning all the health benefits.
It was not our choice when we got an induction cooktop the first time, but now it would be.
If you want to push, you could improve the efficiency even more. That would require a capital investment into additional stoves and/or electric kettles. You'd probably need something like kubernetes for orchestration as well.
Interestingly, I feel compelled to wash a pot even if I only used it to boil water, while that's not the case for the kettle. Force of habit I guess
You have the mother of all hotspots on the pan (less relevant for boiling) where the induction ring itself is and getting simmer right is harder. Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output.
Not at all. There is no significant hot spot as heat is actually produced by the bottom of the pan and not the coils themselves.
> Induction as implemented right now is on/off with full blast for the duration and just increased downtime. It is not the same as low constant output.
Again, not at all. All the devices I have used were perfectly fine generating a low, constant heat. what you describe may be the case for bargain basement ones, and it was the case for most resistive cooktops, but is definitely not the case for inductions ones.
The pan will only heat up near the coil, so if the coil covers only the center third of the pan, only that will heat up (though some pans have a heat-spreading layer to mitigate this, and sometimes to add some more inertia depending on the pan’s purpose).
Yes, but then it’s hardly a problem with the technology if you put a large pan on a small burner.
As for the rest, in all cookers I have seen, the coils cover the whole surface, except for a small spot in the centre. Besides, induced current does not happen only where the cookware is closest to the coil. The magnetic field is more spread out than that and the heating surface is larger than just the surface of “contact” (there is no real contact, but anyway).
I assume there could be an exceptionally badly designed induction cooktop with hot spots (it’d have to have a very weird geometry, though), but that would take some effort.
I have never seen an induction cooktop that could generate low, constant heat. Even pretty pricy ones (eg. a 3000€ Bora hob with integrated extraction) showed a clear on/off cycle at the lowest heat settings. But maybe tech has improved in recent years, and there are hobs now that have constant low power output?
Maybe the effect also just depends on your cookware? On pots with a heavy bottom with aluminium or copper core you probably won't see the coil patterns and the on/off effect will be less pronounced. If you have a pot with a thin stainless steel bottom, you will definitely see uneven heat, the power from an induction coil is not completely homogenous.
My issues with it are more about inaccurate placement causing hot and cold spots and if you move a pot it can triggers cookware detection, which then clicks different coils on and off for 5-10s before it is satisfied with the new configuration. Both of those issues are probably exacerbated by the "FlexInduction" system that promises one large automatic cook area.
I'm hoping that power electronics development for electric cars creates some innovation in this area, but it's really hard to tell because there are no useful review sites and there aren't any places that let you take a cooktop for a testdrive.
Right! The only thing there is are occasional reviews on shopping websites, but people can usually only compare it to their previous one, so there really are no useful reviews (spoiler: most induction hobs are faster than whatever people had before, and people seem to hate touch controls)
Especially once you get to the fancy features (eg. internal and external temperature sensors) there are almost no reviews at all and all you have is the manufacturers marketing.
Not quite. Water is heavy and boiling water is dangerous; if you're boiling your water in a teakettle you then have to transfer it to a pot on the stove without scalding yourself.
(This isn't the exact problem I'd experience if I adopted your advice. I have an electric teakettle, but it is low volume and is also sharply limited in the rate at which you can pour out water from it. That's fine if you want to prepare individual servings of tea. It's unworkable if you want to prepare a bunch of boiling water to boil stuff in. But fixing that problem will immediately cause the "boiling water is dangerous" problem.)
If I'm looking to boil say 2 litres of water, I'll put 1.5 l in the electric kettle, 0.5l in the pot on the gas stove with a lid on. Generally the kettle boils first.
I don't think this is true. The mechanics are essentially the same. But the colander receiving the pasta + boiling water is situated inside the sink, which will catch the water that is in that case intended to spill out.
The pot is situated on the stove, which is a raised platform that can't catch water at all. Any spill there will splash all over.
An even better way (and one that also saves cleanup) is to use an electric pressure cooker like an InstantPot to cook the pasta
Induction hobs are about as good as a kettle (and you lose less energy because you're not heating up the glass/plastic/metal of the kettle).
EDIT: Ah, there are some: https://www.amazon.com/DASH-Insulated-Electric-Kettle-Cordle...
Ideally you should only be boiling the water you need.
Moreover I sometimes want to add extra hot water to my 0,5L cup of tea. When boiling water, I already add the extra water I'll need so I get it just-in-time (except it has already lost much heat thus why I'll try to get insulated kettle). My wife may or may not want to drink tea, but I get ready water anyways (yeah, this could be organized better)
But gas is a lot cheaper than electric anyway so I wouldn't expect a kettle to be much cheaper.
This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. Combined with passive cooking it could save real money…
Technology Connections on YouTube has a good video about how electric kettles are the superior way to boil water: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c