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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Induction burners are extremely efficient (>80%) vs something like 40% for gas burners, so the induction would come ahead in your example (1400W vs 1100W).

The cooktops you can buy here in Europe are limited to 3.7kW, and you can bridge two burners for up to 7.4kW. I rarely use one burner beyond ~70% power, anything above gets scorching hot (= burns everything) when using a good iron/steel pan. I heard the US has the infrastructure to deliver 240V so that should be possible.

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North American electrical infrastructure is natively 240v, split phase (two 120v hots, with a centre-tapped neutral). All houses have 240v power, and all stoves and ovens are already 240v at 40 or 50 amps. If there's a need for 240v power at a particular location (such as a high powered window AC unit), it's generally quite easy to switch a standard 120v circuit to 240v and replace the outlets on the circuit with their 240v counterparts (identical except the prongs are horizontal).

Getting a bit off topic here, but I’d like to learn more about this…

In most cases wouldn’t you need to run a thicker wire to replace a 120v outlet with 240v?

No, only if you increase the amperage of the circuit breaker. Doubling the voltage just doubles the power you can deliver over the same wire. To keep it the same, you can actually use a thinner wire. That's part of the reason long-distance transmission lines are at many thousands of volts.

You run two hots instead of one, that's 200% "thicker". Between the two hots you now have 240V. Between each hot and the neutral you have 120V like before.

They might be 80% efficient, but I think around 40% of California electricity comes from natural gas. It’s kind of silly to convert from gas to electricity to heat in terms of efficiency.

It may sound silly at first, but the numbers are not far off. The added losses for 50% (power plant) and 80% (cooktop) efficiency would give you the same 40% overall, but now you don't need massive pipes carrying flammable pressurized gas everywhere. And both of those numbers are probably higher for modern equipment (ex 60/90 = 54% overall efficiency).

Natural Gas to electric energy conversion happens at a higher efficiency. Millions are invested to ensure that.

In addition every gas to heat thing can't be decarbonised (electricity to gas won't work at this scale and would be hugely inefficient) to negative emissions.

I checked this recently. California is still in the 30-40% range for gas/fossil fuels usage on average, but it has achieved a 100% renewables grid for a 15 minute period this year, and it wasn't a fluke or engineered stunt, but one more in a series of record-breaking milestones which have seen the grid periodically blast through the 90% range. So the trend looks good for electric conversion.

Why are they preparing for widespread brownouts this summer? https://www.eenews.net/articles/grid-monitor-warns-of-u-s-bl...

I’m getting tired of people citing the efficiency of electric vs gas without including the any of the electric production and distribution. Sure at the point of use electric is more efficient but what do you think they make that electricity with? Most likely it’s coal, after that it’s natural gas. The best argument in favor isn’t dubious claims to efficiency or even indoor combustion but that it’s fungible. Once you put the electric infrastructure you can transition from one source to another more easily. As more renewables come online you can phase out fossil fuels. I’m a little suspicious of the motivations to go all electric and rip out gas infrastructure. Enron and the recent troubles with the Texas power grid don’t bode well.

In California it's mostly renewable with a small amount of natural gas and nuclear. Occasionally over 90% renewable depending on the time of year.

I don’t know where you got your data but mine would say otherwise

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

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