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Comment by maxwell86 | Hacker News Reader

Good induction is light years better than good gas stoves. Ours has 4.5kW _per plate_, and its awesome. Silent, instantaneously hot, instantaneously cold, full control over the heat, no gases, etc.

For heating and hot water, "remote heat" is infinitely cheaper, both in acquisition and maintenance costs, and infinitely more environmentally friendly than gas and electric heating.

Sure, if you live in a remote region or a third world country, then you get what you can get. But in any modern first world city, there is no quality in the solution space in which gas is better than the alternatives, and as a whole, gas is just substantially worse.

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Heat pumps only work on their own in mild climates. Cold climates still require furnace in conjunction with the heat pump. Good luck convincing anyone in the northern United States of getting rid of their furnace or hot water heater. Spouting this sort of head-in-the-clouds, wrong information only weakens your cause.

“WHERE DO HEAT PUMPS WORK BEST?

Heat pumps are more common in milder climates, where the temperature does not typically drop below freezing. In colder regions, **they can also be combined with furnaces**for energy-efficient heating on all but the coldest days. When the temperature outside drops too low for the heat pump to operate effectively, the system will instead use the furnace to generate heat. This kind of system is often called a dual fuel system – it is very energy efficient and cost effective.”

https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/heat-pump...

Heat pumps are fairly popular in Scandinavia where it gets quite cold, they fall back to resistive heating when it gets below -20°C, I think.

This is the same as "hybrid" cars. It seems like a sensible halfway point but once you try it you find that just going fully electric has many benefits.

Like for example, if you're going to go to the expense of laying gas pipes for those furnaces, why not lay a geothermal loop instead and use that to boost the heat pumps output?

And, like the "EVs don't work in the cold" claim, there's lots of experience outside the US of EVs and heat pumps working well in cold climates. You might need to insulate your house or stop actively subsidizing fossil fuels to make it happen in the early stages but it's totally doable.

I live in the Great Lakes with a heat pump heating in a drafty Victorian house. The heat pump came with resistive heat strips but they only kick on a few days a year.

Once I airseal some more and fix some of the leaky storms I expect it to never resort to resistive at all.

Heat pumps do work in cold climates.

and imagine it wasn't a drafty victorian, but rather a new build passive house with incredibly good insulation. One would probably be fine with the heat pump alone.

Why are you talking about heat pumps?

If you have remote heat, you don’t need a heat pump.

Heat pumps are expensive, and hard to service and maintain (though they usually have a long lifetime). Some of them use pretty toxic chemicals that you don’t really want leaking.

You have left this comment multiple times in the threads, in comments that have nothing to do with heat pumps:

> Spouting this sort of head-in-the-clouds, wrong information only weakens your cause.

The only thing you are showing is your ignorance everywhere.

> Ours has 4.5kW _per plate_

That's impressive. The top-of-the-line Bosch induction cooktop, which retails for $2500 USD, tops out at 3.3kW on the largest plate. The rest are all most like 1.7-2.2 each.

A four burner range that could pull off 4.5kW per plate would probably require a 100A 240V circuit. Woof.

https://rover.ebay.de/rover/0/0/99?loc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eba...

I have a similar model to that one, but can’t find mine (it’s a bit older). That one cost 140€ and has 3.5kW. Mine was cheaper (~100€) and has 4.5kW, which is insane.

Which induction range do you have? Most electric stoves don’t come close to the heat output of gas but 4.5 kw is within range.

Most people don't live in a dense large city. It is telling you equate those people with living in a third world. Country though.

Gas blows induction out of the water for actual cooking, not just reheating stuff

> Most people don't live in a dense large city.

Actually, most of the world population (>50%, ~4 billion people) lives in dense urban areas since ~2007: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization

The current trend is expected to continue to increase.

Well, urban vs rural in the United States -- it certainly does suggest most people live in urban. Not sure what you mean by "dense" urban though.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/985183/size-urban-rural-...

As one guy put it, there are more Republicans living in Orange County than there are in the entire state of Mississippi.

My medium-end bought-off-craigslist induction cooktop made by GE is faster and more controllable than either the stove at a friend's house which is an old-school huge commercial-range-style gas stove, or my parent's stove which is a newer but high-end gas range.

I've never seen a stove bring 8 qt of water to boil so quickly.

Spoken like someone who has never used an induction burner in their entire life.

I've used both and induction clearly comes out on top, by a huge margin.

As for home heating with gas: wrong again - heat pumps are the superior method, and come with the benefits of being air conditioners as well.

“WHERE DO HEAT PUMPS WORK BEST? Heat pumps are more common in milder climates, where the temperature does not typically drop below freezing. In colder regions, *they can also be combined with furnaces*for energy-efficient heating on all but the coldest days. When the temperature outside drops too low for the heat pump to operate effectively, the system will instead use the furnace to generate heat. This kind of system is often called a dual fuel system – it is very energy efficient and cost effective.”

https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/heat-pump...

Gas is still an inferior solution in those cases - wood pellets are better for those climates. Better yet, a combination of heat pumps and wood pellet furnaces gives you the best of both worlds - very energy-efficient heating while the temperature is still not too far below freezing (iirc heat pumps still beat alternatives as far down as negative 10-15 C), and wood pellets to handle the most extreme colds of the year.

There's also the alternative of putting the outlet of the heat pump below ground, where the temperature never gets that far below zero.

It's entirely incorrect to say that heat pumps only work in mild climates. I live in a country where we do not have a mild climate, and heat pumps are becoming more popular each day, owing to their technological superiority.

I've used both. I like gas far more because I have better control over the temperature of what I'm making. This is pretty important when frying, boiling milk, making flat foods like dosa etc. The on-and-off method induction uses to control temperature is not ideal for this. I like induction for cooking when I need to boil or slow cook for a decent amount of time. Just set a timer and let it heat. Used an induction for 3 years and didn't regret getting a gas one instead

I'm also not a fan of using buttons and touch controls on something like this when cooking. It's distracting and cumbersome. Lowering temperature requires multiple button presses when gas just lets me turn a knob to instantly put it on low

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