This is MY take on the subject ...
I have a 2kW Induction Hob in my conversion and am very pleased with it.
Pros:
- Speed - Just about all the energy put out by the Induction Hob goes towards heating the food/liquid, unlike Gas where most of the energy goes to heating the surrounding area. This means that a kettle will boil much faster for example. (I fill the kettle with 2 mugs worth of water, put it on the hob at around 1000W setting and by the time I have put a teabag in one cup, spoon of coffer in the other and got the fridge, the water is boiling)
- Cost - An electric Induction Hob can be bought for a lot less money than a Gas Hob. I bought mine as a Maplins clearance for £25. A Gas hob is generally over £200
- Cleaner and Safer - Smooth glass surface to wipe and no naked flames
Cons:
- Power - You obviously need enough battery bank capacity to power the hob - both in terms of power used and current drawn. as jimcamper points out, a 2kW Induction Hob can pull a high current. He calculates at around 173A - I can pull close to 200A with mine once the inverter is factored in and that is a high current (too high) to pull off a typical battery bank.
- Inverter - You need an inverter to be able to deliver this. And again as jimcamper says, the hob goes on and off in use so you cannot decide to limit the setting at 1000W say and get a smaller inverter - the hob will deliver 1000W by running at 2000W for a few seconds, and then off for a few seconds to average 1000W.
I found with mine at lower power (say 600W) it will go between 0W and 1000W on and off, but above 1000W it will go between off and 2000W, but different hobs have different power patterns.
The Inverter should really be a Pure Sine Wave, but people have reported using a MSW successfully (again that mght be hob-dependant)
- Cost - you save on the cooker, but you need to spend on the Inverter and Battery
- Need Ferrous cookware. Typical camping pots won't work
The
Inverter & Power are not a factor if you will only use on hookup of course.
You can get low-power portable Induction Hobs as well. I also have a pair of 500W Portable hobs (one from Maplins, one from Lakeland, actually identical except for labelling) which work well, albeit slower of course (but still faster than gas). One of these could let you get away with a smaller
inverter and if used for boiling water and heating soup and beans for snacks rather than full meals can be used with a pretty normal sized
battery.
I chose Induction over Gas for a number of reasons:
- I just didn't want plumbed-in gas in my conversion (my van, my choice)
- I needed a decent sized Battery Bank and large Inverter anyway to provide off-grid workshop facilities.
- Given #2, adding an Induction Hob didn't make my Battery Bank and Inverter needs any greater and allowed my to use my investment in #2 when I was in 'Leisure Mode'
In my previous conversion, I had a Smev 2-ring gas hob and a pair of 110Ah AGM Batteries. I found I could use the portable 500W Induction hob very well in that van and tended to use that where possible and being portable, let me use it in the awning.
In my current conversion, I use the 2kW Induction inside (drop-fixed into the worktop), and if cooking outside use the portable Inductions or a BBQ. I carry a cheap portable gas cartridge stove as a backup but that only gets used if I need an extra 'ring', not for energy problems (except once, when the heater wasn't working - used the gas stove to boil a kettle as the excess heat from the gas warmed up the van a treat
)
