Gas connections for all new housing and sub-divisions will be banned in Victoria from January 1 next year.
Savings from not requiring gas pipes, appliances and gas supply infrastructure help to offset the costs of highly efficient electric appliances.
The government’s announcement of $10 million for Residential Electrification Grants should help with some of these costs while the industry adjusts.
Some components of efficient electric products, such as hot water storage tanks, are made locally.
While the benefits are clear for new homes, the changes may increase gas costs and energy poverty for residents of existing housing who don’t shift to efficient electric solutions.
Consumer education and modifications to appliances and buildings may be needed to increase acceptance and avoid backlash.
Induction hobs are amazing. Much faster than gas at boiling water, and an equal response to changing temperature. Lower quality induction jobs and cookware will have hot spots though.
The best thing about induction is the ease of cleaning the top. Will never go back to gas
What we need is a kick arse list of cheapest to most expensive but in an order of quality/price ratio.
I have no idea if this is true, but apparently the IKEA induction cooktops are very good bang for buck and might be made by Bosch. I am thinking of switching everything to electric, especially now that I have solar, so I’ll be looking into this claim in the next few weeks.
I have the cheapest ikea one. It’s OK, has some flaws.
Definitely usable though.
Would you buy it again? What are the flaws and would someone that has never used induction be bothered by them?
Yes, I would buy it again but only if I could know the value for money was still there. It’s like, maybe if you paid $50-$100 more then the feature set of another one would be “worth” it.
We had a fancy Blanco (early adoption) at our previous place versus the cheap IKEA so I can compare in some way.
The IKEA matches it in the cooking department, hot spot isn’t too bad (use cast iron a lot), quick etc. Works well.
Things I don’t like:
Anything below a ‘5’ is on/off, not progressive. Fair enough. This affects our solar panels when production is low, you can’t ease it on so you pay through the grid.
The fan is noisy when it switches on. Sometimes it doesn’t know to turn off so you have to get it at wall after a while. This is the most annoying aspect.
The heat sensor is as noisy as hell, can hear it on the other side of house. Just a whine. Turning it off at wall instead of turning it off on machine is the only way (unless fan is going which I let run a while - some times it turns off, sometimes it doesn’t).
The ‘lock’ feature if you go to touch it too early after turning on won’t register your finger. You end up touch and holding multiple times.
I was websearching it once and came across a tear down from an electrical engineer. It was above my pay grade but they didn’t have nice things to say from a component perspective. I was searching to see what the watts per level were and 5 is the minimum, everything below that is intermittent application of that level of power.
Besides that, all good. Use it all the time. Basically, progressive power, noise, and touch features could be improved but it’s not a deal breaker when you have the switch at wall to control some of the noise.
I have an ikea one. Made by WhirlPool. You can find the manufacturer if you go to the support page for the product. I got a mid range ikea hob, and their 365 frying pan. The frying pan has the best Teflon, but the metal is pretty thin, so there is definitely hot spots. Just something to consider