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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing.

Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction.

It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but it’s a lot of it.

> Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

Trying to put concepts like “better healthcare” on to the growth of electricity demand is unrealistic but generally speaking we’re putting electricity to good use. It’s not being wasted.

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In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

What is NG good for? Induction cook tops perform better than gas ones, heat pumps do better than gas heaters. The only gap I can think of are just in time hot water heaters.

Gas cooktops are good for still being able to cook when the power is out.

I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe).

I have gas-cooked since I was a kid (living in an area with a lot of natural gas, so houses were connected to gas since the 50ies), but induction is so much nicer that I'm happy to not be able to cook during a once in a ~10-20 year outage. Also a lot safer (it still happens quite frequently that a house blows up because of a gas leak, just this week there was a huge explosion in Utrecht what was presumably a gas leak).

Of course, the equation may change for countries with less stable power.

> I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time...

Here in SE Michigan (USA) I have quite a few friends who've totaled more than 15 days without power in the past couple years. Most of that in multi-day outages.

Sadly one of those countries is the United States.

Here in Colorado they've started pre-emptively shutting off power during wind storms when it's hot and dry because there have been multiple instances of wind blowing down power lines which then start big fires. We had one instance in December where the power was out 2-3 days for tens of thousands of people, and over a week for some people.

Of course the problem is that nobody wants to pay to bury the lines. They'd need all new equipment for digging, to retrain all of the technicians, and get permission from a million different entities to dig up their land. We're effectively locked in to overhead cables.

It's very local here. I'm in the suburbs of Philadelphia, in one of the highest income counties in the state, two blocks from a major hospital, one block from a suburban downtown. Despite that, I've experienced one or two 4-6 hour long power outages per year the past few years. (Mostly correlated with weather.) One outage in June 2025 was 50 hours long!

Many larger homes in this area have whole-house generators (powered by utility natural gas) with automatic transfer switches. During the 50-hour outage, we "abandoned ship" and stayed with someone who also had an outage, but had a whole-house generator.

Other areas just 5-10 miles away are like what you describe: maybe one outage in the past 10 years.

On an island, in a rainforest with regular storms. The power goes out multiple times a year due to trees falling on power lines. We also don't have municipal gas lines piped everywhere. Delivery only. If you have a leak they won't deliver until its fixed.

In the central USA my power is out up to 3 or 4 times a year for an hour or more, and momentarily maybe once every month or two. It's due to our power distribution being mostly overhead lines which are vulnerable to falling trees, squirrels, ice accumulation, storm and wind damage, etc. Even though my neighborhood has buried lines, that's just the last mile. The incoming power is all overhead lines.

North America generally has more extreme weather (everything from tornadoes to hurricanes and usually a much larger temperature range) and more above-ground electrical distribution than Europe.

I live in downtown Toronto and we get ice rain that occasionally knocks out power in portions of the city, though I live downtown where most of the lines are buried and I'm on the same electrical sub-block as several hospitals. The last time I lost power was the massive North American blackout of 2003.

> I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe).

I guess you don't live in Berlin.

Batteries or Generators don’t just let you cook and stay warm when the power is out but do everything else such as keep food cold as well.

Do induction cooking tops work well on batteries (or generators)? IIRC our induction plate has two-phase power because it can pull more than 3.6kW.

There are models that include a battery to reduce the input power requirement. That's not quite the same as the question, but it answers it, you just need a big enough battery and they are fine.

Sure, as long as you size the system to expected loads.

An 8kW generator suitable for occasional use is only ~1,000$. A Powerwall 3 does 11kW continuous and peaks at 30kW for transitory loads like starting heavy equipment.

The most convenient solution where a generator automatically kicks in during a power outage requires an electrician and extra equipment, but there’s also real tradeoffs to having gas lines going to your home.

There is a good technology connections video about building backup batteries into the actual stove.

I think part of the problem with whole home backups is that they tend to be sized to a maximum load that is unusual or could be avoided with some effort. And that providing a backup for the essentials you actually need is relatively cheap and uncomplicated if you make some modest sacrifices.

Interesting fact: A lot of modern gas cooktops have safety features that will cut the gas off when the electricity is out. The safety mechanisms are powered by electricity, so if they can't confirm that the operation is safe they fail with the gas valve shut off.

It comes as a surprise to most users because power outages are so rare. They just assume it will work until 8 years later when they try to cook something during the first long outage in their area.

TIL. Never used a modern gas stove, so I had not considered that without a pilot light, there must be a way to disable the flow or constantly spew gas into the house. Then again, I have had a pilot light go out for some amount of time without obvious ill effect, so the volume of gas must be low.

Pilot lights stay lit all the time so no igniter is required. My range has electric spark igniters. They don't work when the power is out but there is also no pilot light expelling gas. I just manually light the burner when the power is out.

My gas stove has spark ignitors for the burners and the oven has an incandescent ignitor. The oven has safety interlocks so the gas valve won't open if the ignitor is not hot. The oven cannot be lit manually, but the stovetop burners can. So in a power outage, I can cook in pots and pans but not bake.

Usually the pilot energizes a thermocouple+solenoid that is used to hold the gas valve open, so the valve shuts if the pilot goes out.

> Interesting fact: A lot of modern gas cooktops have safety features that will cut the gas off when the electricity is out.

Huh, I did not know that. The natural gas stove that I grew up with has a good ol' fashioned pilot light, so it's fine even when the power goes out.

Gas stoves need electricity for the starter these days. Maybe you can get a really old one with a pilot light.

It's far easier to provide a backup for electric appliances using a generator, than it is to store CNG onsite for gas interruption.

Matches work fine to light burners.

A lighter works wonders if your spark igniters ever get shorted by your wife dumping water on the stove.

I recommend a backup butane stove, which is what I have for outages where my induction stove doesn't work.

Also an outdoor camp chef stove. Both are cheap and work great. My camp chef doubles as an outdoor pizza oven.

You could get a small propane burner or a lot of people have propane grills (sometimes with burners) in their backyards. Gas burners and stoves aren't bad but expanding the gas network to new homes is a huge expense.

> What is NG good for?

Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster" or "heats with a better distribution of heat".

It is foolish, but many still think so. I personally believe that the only kind of cooking that benefits from NG are round-bottom woks. But they can be substituted by flat-bottom pans without problems.

Flat bottom woks need a lot more oil to stir fry properly, due to the lack of pooling. Flat bottom woks on electric cooktops (radiant or induction) also tend to have essentially nonexistent heating of the side slopes, preventing you from using the technique of splashing soy sauce (and other cooking sauces, as well as cooking wines) in a wide arc so that it reduces rapidly to form a sticky coating for the food. Instead, all of the sauce will just run down to the bottom where it joins the rest of the liquids coming out of the food, contributing to boiling/steaming rather than stir frying.

> Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster"

It’s almost entirely about heat _control_, especially when you turn the heat down or off. Non-induction electric stoves can take minutes or longer for a burner to cool down. When you cut the heat on a NG stove, it’s essentially immediate.

This matters quite a bit for heat-sensitive dishes like omelettes.

Induction doesn’t have this problem, but also hasn’t been widely available until maybe recently and won’t work on a lot of aluminum cookware. So you’re asking people to change their cookware along with their range. That can be a bridge too far for many.

They are mostly Nouvelle & Haute Cuisine french dishes: omelettes, holandaise/bernaise sauces, custards (Crème Anglaise, Pots de Crème), melted chocolate, caramel, generally poached stuff, etc.

For the lower temperatures, a lot of that temperature control can be made with bain marie (warm water).

And the remaining ones aren't made in aluminum cookware, anyway. And people that cook such sophisticated food probably will have a lot of non-aluminum cookware, already.

Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants — we’ve a gas hob but always switch the extractor on when we use it because of this

You should have the hood on while cooking no matter the type of stove top.

> Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants

To be more precise: mostly CO2 and small amounts of CO. But the actual concentration of CO2 in your house can be affected by a lot of other factors (ventilation, urban environment, weather, etc).

It also releases NO2, PM2.5 and VOCs

I don't know about that. I like my induction cooker but I can't use cast iron on it (I've ruined other ones trying). I will use it for 90% of my cooking though.

I have a duxtop induction burner and I notice it gets hotspots where the coils are. I wonder if the breville control freak is worth the money or it has better granularity of its heating element.

But yeah if I built a new house, I would have an induction top.

The control freak (commercial one) is worth every penny.

If the power goes out I can still cook and heat with gas.

*this is a regular occurence in some countries

I think NG outperforms in high efficiency heaters when the outside temperature is around 1-4 degrees Celsius with humidity as it causes ice buildup on the external unit which then has to be cleared using resistive heating. Also if only little hot water is required sporadically, heating it just in time with gas is more efficient than keeping a buffer heated for long times.

Also, heat pumps do best when the temperature differential is lower. So in older housing without floor heating or duct heating, it is typically not as efficient to use a heat pump when the water to heat has to be above 55 degrees Celsius.

For any new residential construction I think there is very little value in natural gas.

Methane has lots of value in colder climates, especially much of Canada. Methane is cheap and does not lose heating capacity as temperature falls. Across most of Canada, the median construction year for a typical house is in the 1980. Half were built before that, meaning insulation standards were lower.

The #1 problem with heat pumps in Canada is low temperature performance. The heat output drops but the rate of heat loss from the house also increases. This is the precise situation where even backup resistive heat cannot keep up. Methane is excellent at filling this gap, especially now when winter temperatures swing more than earlier.

Toronto/Vancouver areas are both well within the temp range for heat pumps (e.g. ~50% of Canada's population). The further norther areas are a bit cold for air source heat pumps, but are still well within ground based heat pump temp ranges.

Toronto and Vancouver have completely different climates.

Toronto regularly has ten days per year where the high temperature is below -15 C.

Even cold climate heat pumps struggle at those temperatures. I would know, i have one.

Heat pumps do fine down to -20C or so. The modern ones have all sorts of tricks to avoid icing. (mostly they run the cycle in reverse which is extremely efficient since you are heating the ice on the compressor with the warmer inside air)

That is awesome to hear. I noticed that mine does fine sub 0, but when it is moist and around 1-4 degrees Celsius a lot of ice forms and it needs the resistive heating.

I didn’t see it reverse cycle yet. But I have air-air with one outside unit connected to three inside units. It’s a Mitsubishi Heavy from 2023.

I own an induction stove, and overall really enjoy it. But there are certain types of cooking it's not nearly as well suited to (still possible, but not as good). One of those is cooking on a wok.

But really it comes down to heating. Heat pumps are not universally better. We are currently sitting at -25C or so which is pretty common in the winter (it can even get a fair bit colder at times). Hardly any of the contractors around here work with heat pumps, and even the ones that do aren't aware of the latest tech. That said even if you could get a cutting edge system through sheer money/will I am not sure how it would perform without at least a gas backup. At least from an efficiency standpoint.

Not to mention we have had electricity go out in the winter which can be life threatening or at least cause substantial damage to property. I can't remember ever having the gas go out. (we have generator backup but that couldn't run an electric furnace for very long).

Lastly we have a gas water heater (tankless) and damn that thing is efficient. A few therms a month...

If you're really hampered by not having a wok behavior for your induction stove, good news! There are plugin induction woks! From what I hear they work great. Technology Connections on YouTube did a great video about them

I also own an induction range and love it, but I keep a portable butane stove around for random things gas is better for like woks or cooking that involves a lot of lifting the frying pan. Just make sure things are well ventilated (which should be the case with gas stoves, too).

Wok induction cook tops are a thing you can buy also. It’s just not something that westerners are going to build in.

Lifting the frying pan is fine if you don't mind the fucker beeping at you.

Heat pumps do not do well when it's -40 outside. You can say "fine, but how often does it get that cold?" but consumers are not going to be happy with a heat pump if their pipes freeze during an extended cold snap.

I live in Southern Ontario and I have a heat pump with an auxiliary natural gas furnace for emergency heating. The heat pump shoulders most of the heating load but the thermostat does kick on the furnace when the heat pump starts falling behind.

It should also be noted that although heat pumps are very efficient, even when it's below freezing outside, they cannot raise the temperature of the house very quickly. Consumers are generally quite unhappy when it takes 8 hours to raise the temperature of the house by 1 degree, so the thermostat usually calls for the furnace to start up before things get that bad.

Canada's climate is really different when it comes to the extreme cold.

Heat pumps are getting better at lower temperatures, but in an environment like Canada you still want auxiliary heat to be safe.

> It should also be noted that although heat pumps are very efficient, even when it's below freezing outside, they cannot raise the temperature of the house very quickly. Consumers are generally quite unhappy when it takes 8 hours to raise the temperature of the house by 1 degree

That would be an undersized heat pump in any regard. The installer would be at fault for screwing up that badly.

You're right that efficiency falls off at lower temperatures, 8 hours to move 1 degree would be from the installer sizing the unit wrong.

It's not just the efficiency of the heat pump that is at issue, it's the insulation of the house. As the outside temperature plunges, the house begins cooling off much more rapidly. This means the reduced efficiency of the heat pump (operating in cold outdoor temperatures) needs to produce more heating than it would at higher temperatures, and it's just not capable of that. My house was built in the 1980s and its insulation has always been more than adequate for the original natural gas furnace to be able to heat.

The heat pump I have is only a few years old and cost $12,000 installed (before tax credits). To be able to rapidly heat the house when it's -40 outside would require a system costing several times that! Much cheaper just to use a furnace for those few days per year.

air source heat pumps, though they're improving won't do well in extreme cold; even if they can operate they'll still be running at much lower efficiency.

For temperatures significantly into negative territory a ground source heat pump would perform far better, where it can draw on a source of heat that will always be at least above freezing.

A hybrid system doesn't seem like a bad trade-off though..

Induction is better in some ways and worse in others. It's so efficient and boils water like crazy but at low settings it's almost always pulsed rather than continuous and I've never liked that. I have both in my kitchen.

Perform better as in more efficient electrically, not necessarily more pleasant or efficient in the cooking process.

For example, when cooking an omelette, a recommended technique is to angle the pan so the liquid part flows towards the hot part of the pan touching the flame as you slowly scrape the curds up to rest at the cooler part of the pan. AFAIK an induction cooktop is unable to simulate this technique. Now maybe there are similar ways of getting this, but there’s centuries of experience informing cooking on top of a fire in some form or another. The techniques for cooking on induction cooktops well have not been learned, taught and communicated.

I've been cooking eggs on induction cooktops for something like a decade now; while it's true that you can't tilt the pan (the induction won't work, and the cooktop is likely to just say "nope, not operating without a pan on me"), I've had no trouble with getting either scrambled eggs or omelettes to be softly and evenly cooked.

Perhaps it helps that I had never had that particular advice for cooking on gas/electric!

I have an old but still perfectly functional high-end gas cooktop. I have no plans to replace it. Sturdy cast-iron trivets are bulletproof. You get visual feedback about heat intensity. I use enough heavy Dutch ovens and stainless and cast-iron pans that a glass cooktop under them seems like an added risk.

You can find induction wok stove tops on alibaba (China obviously has more vested in electric transition than we do), but ya, standard western stove tops are flat.

How is filling your living space with poisonous gas pleasant at all?

P.S. basting works on induction if I crank up to boost mode.

> not necessarily more pleasant or efficient in the cooking process.

For amateurs, I find that the gain of control from using induction far outweighs everything else--especially at low heats. If I put a newbie on an induction with a temperature sensor, they generally do great. Over time they start to correlate the behavior of the food with the temperature, but, even if they don't, they still can maintain control over the food via the temperature sensor.

> The techniques for cooking on induction cooktops well have not been learned, taught and communicated.

And, sometimes, those old techniques are just a pain in the ass and only exist because of the lack of control. Caramelizing onions requires a lot less attention when I can set the pan to a specific temperature and don't have to worry about thermal runaway as the water cooks off. There are all manner of directions for thickening custards that aren't required if you can set the pan at exactly 180F and know that it isn't going above that. Tempering chocolate is stupidly easier when you can set the pan for 115F-81F-88F rather than having to swish it on a marble slab or put it on a double boiler and risk seizing the chocolate because of water. On an electric or gas stove, I plan for two batches of caramel because I almost always screw up my first batch if I haven't done it in a while; on induction I almost never miss. etc.

I used to be a gas snob for ages but after moving, first to a place with an induction stove, then to one with a regular electric one, I have to say the supposed advantages are overblown. You can cook perfectly well on either. Induction/gas are slightly nicer if you want to use very high heat but even my current electric stove puts out a lot of power on the highest setting.

And then there's the downsides of gas:

They're a complete mess to clean. Tons of nooks and crannies where stuff might get into. They suck for low heat simmering. There's iron plates you can put below the pot to distribute the heat but that's cumbersome. Low heat flames also go out more easily if there's a draft. Not even talking about air quality and fire risks.

So I'm never going back to gas if I can help it. If I have a choice I'll probably get an induction stove next time around.

Better is subjective here. Vancouver will be a bit different with it's warmer weather, but for the week or two at -30C to -40C(like I get) it provides a lot more heat at a lower price and in Canada, at least Ontario, it is still much cheaper to heat a home and water with. I'll probably go heat pump if my boiler goes as I can avoid the cost of adding ductwork(really expensive these days and more than furnace for install) and get A\C too.

Backup generator for power outages. NG usually still works during electric outages. A generator that you do not need to periodically go out to get more fuel for can be very convenient.

> heat pumps do better than gas heaters

Well, unless the inverter valve breaks and you've got an air conditioner for two and a half months of winter.

Ask me how I know.

Natural gas is good for when the power goes out. I've never seen natural gas go out in my life. If you have an electric stove and the power goes out, you simply can't cook stovetop meals until the power is restored. Oh, and if you're thinking of using a generator to power your house if the grid is out, know that most generators run on natural gas.

You can use bbq.

Power went out in my area at night the other day. It was easy to spot the guy with the solar panels and home battery. His was a fountain of light in the darkness.

> What is NG good for?

The biggest advantage of NG is that we can store months of it. (Currently we can store only seconds of electricity, if that. Citation needed!)

I have a dream that some day we will come up with an efficient process for generating methane from atmospheric CO2, water, and electricity, and we’ll be able to take advantage of our extensive natural gas grid. (Natural gas is essentially methane.)

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