[VBprogrammer]

Slightly off topic but imagine an induction cooker with the original iPod control wheel as it's power control.

We opted for a gas hob when we installed our kitchen. Mostly because I like the controllability when cooking. Obviously it's a nightmare for health and the environment but man it makes cooking easier.

[robocat]

Touch controls on induction cooktops/hobs are almost ubiquitous, and they have extremely poor usability in my experience. Liquids cause problems, and you need to be very careful not to move a pan or any utensils over the controls, or brush against them while concentrating on cooking. Apart from the other awful usability issues with the UI or icons.

I did a survey of all the cooktops/hobs I could find in my city, looking for something that would suit my elderly mum, and I didn’t find a single unit that was usable. Fortunately a salesperson knew of a recently developed “cheap” model from a noname brand, which had individual knobs, so I ordered that, it arrived an month ago so I got it installed, and it has worked very well for my mum.

Usability is not something that most people know to look for when making purchases, so most whiteware ends up with a hideous UI. People will buy shit, then complain, but it doesn’t change their future purchasing habits (e.g. looking for features, especially useless features!)

I bought a middling brand microwave with knobs that has reasonable usability, despite providing all features. The iPhone is another possible counterexample, although I fucking hate many of their usability decisions (remove all multi-tasking shit from my iPad - I only ever initiate it by mistake and I always struggle to revert my mistake - fucking floating windows and split windows and fucking ... at top of the screen).

[VBprogrammer]

The ability to clean the cooker is the only advantage of touch controls. I don't know how well the original iPod touch wheel would hold up in that environment but from a usability point of view it was excellent.

[dudeofea]

how is it a nightmare? if you aren't getting that energy from natural gas, you'd mostly get it from a CO2 producing power plant, with efficiency losses going from heat (steam) -> electric -> heat (cooktop)

[cameronh90]

Because about 45% of our (UK) electricity doesn't emit carbon. Gas is also really terrible for indoor air quality.

[Retric]

Even Gas cooktops without a pilot light are surprisingly inefficient with under 40% of the energy ending up in your pan. (Which is why the air several feet above the pan is so hot.) On top of this you end up venting air your HVAC system just used a lot of energy to make pleasant outside and/or breathing noxious fumes from incomplete combustion so Carbon Monoxide, NOx, formaldehyde etc

Induction stoves powered by natural gas power plants are more efficient than directly cooking with natural gas plus you can use clean solar/wind/nuclear/hydropower or oddballs like geothermal.

[sgerenser]

It’s even worse if you don’t size the burner to the pan. My wife always uses the largest burner with an 8 inch pan, probably 70% of the heat goes around and over it. Really made me want to switch to induction but I noticed the same thing that most induction cooktops have stupid, unreliable touch controls.

[VBprogrammer]

I think efficiency of a hob is pretty low on the priority list right? Certainly when framed in cost terms (gas being cheaper than electric). The total amounts are too small relative to hot water / home heating to make much difference. Especially if you go out of your way to find an induction cooker with a decent interface (there is at least one out there with knobs).

For most things which would need cooked on a hob for a long time we use an Instapot electric pressure cooker anyway (out of preference rather than efficiency concern).

[Retric]

It depends on what your paying for fuel, propane is shockingly expensive at 3$/gallon right now + delivery fees but let’s use 3$ for 91,452 BTU which works out to 11.2c/kWh before you consider efficiency.

At an optimistic 40% efficiency for a stovetop vs 90% for an induction cooktop the breakeven is 25c/kWh which is well above average US electricity prices. Worse that 40% assumes properly sized cookware in contact with the burner, no pilot light, and ignores the cost of venting air outside.

As to total costs, at full blast a propane burner only costs around 1$/hour but some people do a lot of cooking.