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Comment by jonnycomputer | Hacker News Reader

So, here is an example. To make yogurt, I first heat up milk to just below boiling for about half-an-hour (this denatures the whey in the milk making for a thicker yogurt). If it boils, then it will usually boil over and make a mess. My electric stove heats on an on-off cycle. That means it goes through periods of being a lot hotter than average, and a lot cooler than average. If I set the electric stove so that the average is at the target temperature, then when the cycle goes up, it boils over. So I have to set it so that the average is below the target temperature, or constantly monitor it and adjust the stove. This is the type of temperature control a gas stove (and and induction i guess) affords.

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Then why don't electric stove makers make the stove cycle run at a higher frequency, reducing the deviations? Or provide a larger diversity of max power outputs on different burners of the stove, or something.

Seems like this problem would have been solved long ago if enough people actually cared about it...

Well, not sure, but I had a little portable one that did not cycle at all.

I would imagine this is a situation where cost won over convenience. Particularly in the appliance space, products are often made actively worse in the name of driving down cost. And this isn't just one or two companies, it's virtually every single one.

This, of course, makes it unviable to produce a better product (like an electric stove with better temperature feedback/control) without dramatically increasing prices to make up for the loss in market share.

Yes, the fact that heat on electric is controlled by switching on and off cycle is what prevents me from switching to it (I believe induction does the same to control the heat). We need no fancy control or michelen rated appliance, just a basic gas stove allows us better control than electric stove.

Induction does not do the same thing, mine seems to (from what you can hear) use pwm with a period time of a few milliseconds and adjust duty cycle based on the heat setting

You can make this a lot less severe by using a pot with a higher thermal inertia, e.g. something with a heavy bottom.

Probably. Or I think another trick might be to put the container holding the milk inside another larger container of water. As the water goes to boiling, it steams away, and I think the boiling temp of water is slightly lower than milk.

Why can't electric use a potentiometer instead of cycling on/off ?

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