Induction stove-tops; good or bad

Very big benefit of induction stoves: child safety.

Aforementioned auto shutoff makes it highly unlikely for a little one to burn their hand on an unattended burner.
 
172andyou said:
Good. We agree then.
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No, not at all.

A blanket statement like the one that you made is simply incorrect.

I've spent 35 years in the electrical energy industry, and I'm frankly dismayed by the amount of pure nonsense that is disseminated on the topic of renewables and "efficiency".
 
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We put in a Bosch induction cooktop when we built our house around 4 years ago. It’s great. Fast cooking and easy to clean. I have solar panels too so power is kind of free when the suns shining.
 
Lance F said:
We put in a Bosch induction cooktop when we built our house around 4 years ago. It’s great. Fast cooking and easy to clean. I have solar panels too so power is kind of free when the suns shining.
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The modern day equivalent of "It's so hot out you can cook an egg on _____"! :rofl:
 
Lance F said:
We put in a Bosch induction cooktop when we built our house around 4 years ago. It’s great. Fast cooking and easy to clean. I have solar panels too so power is kind of free when the suns shining.
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Kind of free if one ignores the sunk cost and cost to decommission (but I do understand what you mean)
 
I really like gas. I already use a 500-gallon propane tank, and the stove’s consumption is so minimal that it's essentially free. From late April to late October, the gauge on the propane tank does not move — cooking and on-demand hot water are the only uses during that time.

In contrast, during the peak of winter, I need to refill the tank monthly. Heating a 500,000-pound slab of concrete isn’t exactly cheap. However, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than electricity. Electricity is ridiculously expensive in rural Wisconsin, thanks to what I assume must be the green energy build-outs.

I do think an electric stove would make sense in the city if you did not have natural gas running into the home. However, if you've got the gas there, it's silly not to use it.
 
They do need to sense the pot, or at least any modern unit does. It's way more complicated than an on/off thing. There is feedback required to keep from breaking the electronic driver and/or coil.


It's also possible to make one that will work with non-ferrous metals, but much more of a PITA as the magnetic permeability is lower. They all work by inducing an electrical field in the pot, by magnetic coupling from the "burner".

Have friends that love their induction. I love my gas stovetop. High wing/low wing.
 
We have a lifetime of pots and pans. Most aluminum. The cost of replacement made us go to the glass topped traditional stove. If we were just starting out. . .
 
jesse said:
However, if you've got the gas there, it's silly not to use it.
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There are other potential negatives to gas: fire hazard, carbon monoxide, indoor air quality. Gas stoves may be a cause of childhood asthma. When I recently remodeled my condo in Colorado, we capped the gas lines and converted the stove and fireplace to electric.
 
Ed Haywood said:
There are other potential negatives to gas: fire hazard, carbon monoxide, indoor air quality. Gas stoves may be a cause of childhood asthma. When I recently remodeled my condo in Colorado, we capped the gas lines and converted the stove and fireplace to electric.
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and potential pluses... like working when the power goes out. ETA to fix a typo... can't gaurantee there won't be others...
 
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JOhnH said:
But my wife, who won't even be in the same room when a microwave is running, found out that induction stove-tops emit substantial electro-magnetic radiation.
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Look in the manual for the stove you're looking at. If there is a warning in there, my guess is a general warning for all stovetops to not stand too close.

On the emissions, sorry if I missed if someone said this, but it would be non-ionizing radiation. It does not affect our cells or DNA.

On the microwave, yes, some radiation. But again, you get a few feet away from it and there are no issues. I think they tell people with pacemakers to stay 5 ft away, but not sure on that. I know they can be in the same room though.
 
Ed Haywood said:
There are other potential negatives to gas: fire hazard, carbon monoxide, indoor air quality. Gas stoves may be a cause of childhood asthma. When I recently remodeled my condo in Colorado, we capped the gas lines and converted the stove and fireplace to electric.
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Why doesn't half of America have asthma?
 
jesse said:
In contrast, during the peak of winter, I need to refill the tank monthly. Heating a 500,000-pound slab of concrete isn’t exactly cheap. However, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than electricity. Electricity is ridiculously expensive in rural Wisconsin, thanks to what I assume must be the green energy build-outs.
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What utility are you on? WE is 13 cents and change per kWh for me. Rates for the whole state are regulated by the public service commission - Per utility, not just flat rate for the state of course, but they can't just charge whatever they want, they have to justify it at least.

Most of the green energy isn't here, it's in Iowa. So instead of windmills, now there's a massive set of power lines going up along 151 that is far more unsightly than any windmills I've ever seen. Facepalm.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
What utility are you on? WE is 13 cents and change per kWh for me. Rates for the whole state are regulated by the public service commission - Per utility, not just flat rate for the state of course, but they can't just charge whatever they want, they have to justify it at least.
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WE @ 18 cents per KWH. From my last statement:
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I realize that's not CA pricing, but its quite a shocker, given how it costs 5 cents per KWH in Nebraska. Nebraska's power is entirely publicly owned/operated, which appears to be a more cost effective model.

Needless to say, it doesn't help that my home networking gear alone burns through 540 kWh per month. And don’t even get me started on the heated outdoor cat house my significant other insists we keep running—despite the fact that we don’t have a cat. She saw a stray once and got concerned. I’m fairly certain no cat has ever actually slept in the damn thing. But like Motel 6, we still leave the lights on.
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A couple servers with 40 cores worth of CPU & some GPUs, 466 TB of storage, some PoE gear, and redundant routers & isps adds up. What's real fun is whenever its snowing, I hit about 1000 watts, as it triggers all of my camera motion sensors which then results in all those video feeds getting fed into an energy-sucking Nvidia GPU to analyze the motion with AI models to decide whether there is something worth waking me up over.
flyingcheesehead said:
Most of the green energy isn't here, it's in Iowa. So instead of windmills, now there's a massive set of power lines going up along 151 that is far more unsightly than any windmills I've ever seen. Facepalm.
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Well, renewable energy sure feels alive and well—especially when you live in the middle of the Blue Sky Green Field wind project. The largest wind farm in Wisconsin, but you'd never know it from your electric bill. You’d think folks living right next to these things might get a benefit. Nope.

What we do get is front-row seats to the ongoing hydraulic seal circus. Every turbine is streaked with more oil than a rental airplane with a forgotten oil-fill cap. I guess the seals have been failing since day one. Took a headcount once—it’s over 30 pickup trucks' worth of crew just to fix one turbine as they have to deploy a crane and remove the rotor blades and hub. And they never catch up. It’s like watching a NASCAR pit crew stuck in a loop.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against wind energy where wind energy makes sense. I don’t think the entire concept should be scrapped just because one model of turbine leaks more oil than a Harley. I’ve never seen other farms this messy. But hey, someone clearly decided it was more cost-effective to just endlessly send an army of techs to mop it up than, you know, fix the root problem.

I’ve thought about deploying some DIY solar panels, mainly just to get my server rack off the grid and feel a little less like I’m paying for their maintenance crew’s retirement fund. Still need to crunch the numbers, though. Could be cheaper to just start my own wind farm with better seals.
 

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jesse said:
WE @ 18 cents per KWH. From my last statement:
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Ah crap. Looks like I'm paying that rate now too (new for 2025). That's a big step up.

jesse said:
I realize that's not CA pricing, but its quite a shocker, given how it costs 5 cents per KWH in Nebraska.
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Whoa! That's a steal!

US average for 1/2025 is 15.95 cents/kWh; a year ago it was 15.4. Not long ago, it was 12. I guess everything else went up, so...

jesse said:
Nebraska's power is entirely publicly owned/operated, which appears to be a more cost effective model.
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And without profit margins built in. I think generation cost is around 3-4 cents/kWh in many places, so a retail rate of 5 is quite good.

FWIW, according to the same doc I got the latest numbers from, Nebraska overall is now at 10.56, last year 9.82.

jesse said:
Of course it does not help matters that I'm burning 540 KWH/mo on just my home networking gear:
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Nice setup... But it looks like you're running two UDMPs? What for?

jesse said:
A couple servers with 40 cores worth of CPU & some GPUs, 466 TB of storage, some PoE gear, and redundant routers & isps adds up. What's real fun is whenever its snowing, I hit about 1000 watts, as it triggers all of my camera motion sensors which then results in all those video feeds getting fed into an energy-sucking Nvidia GPU to analyze the motion with AI models to decide whether there is something worth waking me up over.
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Nice.

jesse said:
Well, it certainly feels like it's "here" to me given that I live in the middle of the Blue Sky Green Field wind project (largest wind farm in WI, I believe).
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It is... But Wisconsin has just 737 MW of total wind capacity for 2.63% of consumption. Iowa has 12,200 MW for 62% of consumption. My parents are on Madison Gas & Electric and pay extra for 100% renewable, and their power comes mostly from Iowa. MG&E has 27 MW of capacity in Wisconsin and 146 MW in Iowa, despite being a 100% Wisconsin utility.

Our state is not friendly to wind. :no:

jesse said:
It's entertaining watching the hydraulic seals continually fail in the turbines, resulting in a big streak of oil down the sides of each turbine. I guess that's been happening since they installed them. I counted one day, it takes over 30 pickup trucks worth of crew members to replace the seals on each turbine. Hell of a lot of man power and it doesn't appear that the man power is actually capable of getting ahead of the problem.
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Jeez.

jesse said:
Of course, I don't doom wind energy just because of an engineering flaw in one particular turbine model that is used across this one particular wind farm. I've never seen wind farms anywhere else with all the turbines covered in hydraulic fluid. For some reason or another though, its been determined that it makes more sense to make 30 pickup trucks worth of crew members just replace them over and over like they're a jiffy lube for whatever the life of these turbines is going to be. I cannot imagine that's helping my energy bill...
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Yeah, and in looking at this we're due for another 8 or 9 percent increase next year. :mad:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
FWIW, according to the same doc I got the latest numbers from, Nebraska overall is now at 10.56, last year 9.82.
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I can't speak to the whole state, I was with Lincoln Electric Systems which is specific to the Lincoln area. This is their 2025 rates. Looks like it's still quite the value there (they actually lowered the Kwh costs for 2025 relative to 2024:
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flyingcheesehead said:
Nice setup... But it looks like you're running two UDMPs? What for?
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Two UDM Pro SE's. I started with one and after about 15 months it failed in the middle of my work day. The RMA process takes a few weeks, which I didn't have time for, so I overnighted another one. Once the original came back from RMA I clustered them to hopefully avoid another disruption in the future.

I have my complaints about the electric situation, but, I'm very happy with the state's efforts to advance rural internet availability. When I moved here (2022), my only option was a point to point WISP provider that was 10 megabit down/1 megabit up & full of packet loss. After about 6 months of living here, Starlink became available which I jumped on. Then late last year Bug Tussel ran fiber down the town road & covered the costs for the 700 ft run of fiber they'd need to run across my property to get to the residence. A few months later, Time Warner showed up and did the same thing.

Currently I'm using Bug Tussel's 2.5 gigabit up/down plan as my primary & Starlink as my fail-over provider. I might drop Starlink for Spectrum as the backup (it'd cost less). I'm a little conflicted on that though, as in the event of a major power disruption, its quite possible both fiber providers could drop off-line. I don't have faith that they have adequate emergency power across their network given that I can't audit it. Starlink is a lot more disaster resilient.

flyingcheesehead said:
Yeah, and in looking at this we're due for another 8 or 9 percent increase next year. :mad:
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Sigh...
 
jesse said:
A couple servers with 40 cores worth of CPU & some GPUs, 466 TB of storage, some PoE gear, and redundant routers & isps adds up.
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Nice Unifi stack!

Mine's not nearly as impressive.
 

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jesse said:
I can't speak to the whole state, I was with Lincoln Electric Systems which is specific to the Lincoln area. This is their 2025 rates. Looks like it's still quite the value there (they actually lowered the Kwh costs for 2025 relative to 2024:
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Whoa!!! :o

That is really a steal on a per-kWh basis. Monthly charge isn't great but I would have saved $166 on my last monthly electric bill.

jesse said:
Two UDM Pro SE's. I started with one and after about 15 months it failed in the middle of my work day. The RMA process takes a few weeks, which I didn't have time for, so I overnighted another one. Once the original came back from RMA I clustered them to hopefully avoid another disruption in the future.
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I have a very similar story. I don't think the software supported clustering at the time so I set one up as a hot spare.

jesse said:
I have my complaints about the electric situation, but, I'm very happy with the state's efforts to advance rural internet availability. When I moved here (2022), my only option was a point to point WISP provider that was 10 megabit down/1 megabit up & full of packet loss.
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Lemme guess... Ethoplex?

jesse said:
After about 6 months of living here, Starlink became available which I jumped on. Then late last year Bug Tussel ran fiber down the town road & covered the costs for the 700 ft run of fiber they'd need to run across my property to get to the residence. A few months later, Time Warner showed up and did the same thing.
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Whoa. I never heard of Bug Tussel before. Unfortunately, it looks like their fiber is still about a county away in two directions.

I have one and only one non-wireless broadband option at my house aside from Starlink, and it sucks...

jesse said:
Currently I'm using Bug Tussel's 2.5 gigabit up/down plan as my primary & Starlink as my fail-over provider. I might drop Starlink for Spectrum as the backup (it'd cost less). I'm a little conflicted on that though, as in the event of a major power disruption, its quite possible both fiber providers could drop off-line. I don't have faith that they have adequate emergency power across their network given that I can't audit it. Starlink is a lot more disaster resilient.
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...Spectrum is my only wired option here. I do NOT recommend it. Uptime is not good, but they charge way more money than it'd ever be worth to get any guaranteed uptime or warranty so I just have to deal with it. On the other hand, their speed is terrible. But at least their support also sucks.

 
Did you know that the turbine blades on wind farms require replacement just like copter blades? And they go to a landfill.
 
Feh said:
Did you know that the turbine blades on wind farms require replacement just like copter blades? And they go to a landfill.
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What's wild is that even if you assume they will go in a landfill (which is less and less true as time and technology progresses) wind power is still vastly less polluting and less expensive than fossil fuels.
 
jesse said:
WE @ 18 cents per KWH. From my last statement:
View attachment 139782
I realize that's not CA pricing, but its quite a shocker
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Yeah, it's not CA pricing. I'm at 15.5c :)

I can highly recommend the solar route if you're on the fence. For the engineering-minded, there is a lot of nuance and required precision to it that is very intellectually satisfying. Building my little hangar solar off-grid prepper shack was one of my favorite projects this decade. Enough that I've wanted to buy one of my neighbors' hangars so I can do it again.
 
schmookeeg said:
Yeah, it's not CA pricing. I'm at 15.5c :)

I can highly recommend the solar route if you're on the fence. For the engineering-minded, there is a lot of nuance and required precision to it that is very intellectually satisfying. Building my little hangar solar off-grid prepper shack was one of my favorite projects this decade. Enough that I've wanted to buy one of my neighbors' hangars so I can do it again.
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Good point. We ignore the entertainment value of all this. My grandfather didn't get into ham radio back in the 1950's because he needed to talk to random people in Iowa and France. He did it because he was an engineer and his day job was not stimulating enough.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
...Spectrum is my only wired option here. I do NOT recommend it. Uptime is not good, but they charge way more money than it'd ever be worth to get any guaranteed uptime or warranty so I just have to deal with it. On the other hand, their speed is terrible. But at least their support also sucks.
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Spectrum sucks here too, in terms of reliability. But it's also slow and expensive, too, so there's that.

I setup a Verizon 5G commercial 200 MB router as a backup, and that's faster than the "300 MB" Spectrum. Verizon over performs about about 240, and the Spectrum is lucky to hit 200 MB.

With S, it's almost like it was purchased on gov contract - slow, lousy, expensive - yep, we can do all three!
 
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