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Eddie,

 

That's VERY interesting about the short lifespan of induction cooking elements. Something I've never heard of before. Is it because of the heavier usage a restaurant puts a range to? Or is it a problem that home cooks also will encounter,  also, I wonder?

 

Surely your local paper has a website that you can link to?

 

 
 
Rich, it isn’t the elements that have a short life, its the touch control switches that regulate the heat up or down. The article was in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s 2-12-23 Sunday edition. Other than the short life span of these induction units they had adapted to using them for the most part.

Eddie
 
Found the article Eddie was referencing (I *think*):

 

Excerpt:

 

<blockquote>
Bush knows all too well the technological limitations of induction for the volume of cooking done in restaurants. Since opening Oso, he’s gone through what he estimates is a minimum of 20 induction cookers.

“They just don’t last like gas stoves do,” he said. “The buttons eventually fail, they burn out, they have a pretty short life span.”

There’s no warning when they’re about to go on the fritz, either. He’s had induction cookers go out in the middle of service, which brings the kitchen to a temporary standstill while they haul out the defective burner and bring in a new one that Bush has always at the ready.

Replacing them is costly, and there’s the issue of the waste created by defunct appliances, which has its own environmental impact.

Additionally, Bush doesn’t think the current infrastructure in Sonoma County is enough to support fully electrified restaurants.

“Restaurants draw an incredible amount of energy; everything about the place is lit up and just humming,” he said. “If we had 10 induction cookers, that would require another PG&E substation put in the middle of Sonoma.”

 

</blockquote>

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/artic...oint-in-culture-war-heres-what-sonoma-county/
 
Very poorly written article about induction

The guy must be using the $59 in induction burners that you can buy online.

He has no way to know whether it’s a control going out or the unit itself.

It wouldn’t bring a whole kitchen to a halt if you have to lift one unit out and plug in another.

10 of these do not use enough power to talk about there’s no way they need another substation in town because of his restaurant

Last year as a whole United States use less electricity than the year before in spite of all the electrification, electric cars, heat pumps, etc. we are not going to run out of electricity.

My Kenmore induction cooktop has been going fine for 35 years touch controls, and all not a single glitch.

there are lots of commercial restaurants all over the United States and in Europe using induction without all these failures

John
 
Induction cookers are one of these technical situations where you have to put high power electronics in a very hot environment.

The hotter the cooktops run, and for the longer non stop, the shorter the life is.

That's a known thing even in DWs, and these just run at like 160F tops.
The controls are the same touch controls as in everything and are to my knowledge not any higher or lower in failure rate. It's the power electronics that just succumb to natural causes earlier due to their environment.

The argument that high power electro magnets can't be good for your health is also kind off one of these statements that immediately makes me question the persons positions.
Sounds way to much like the 5G thing...

Magnetic fields and/or radio waves can cause certain sensory misinterpretations in your brain under particular situations.
That's one of the things MRIs actually can cause - but these machines expose your whole body to magnetic fields dozens of times stronger and radio waves in the kW range. And those effects are only existent as long as you are subjected to the fields.

An induction cooker - as long as you aren't in the very small percentage of people who have active electronic implants - can't do anything to your body.

The rounded, wok type induction burners are often offered over here in the "domino" cooking systems offered by several high end manufacturers.

They offer a set of cooking surfaces in an approximately 12" wide, 24" deep units, all the same size.
You then can mount as many of any type to mix and match your personal cooking center.
Since recently, you can even add a downdraft unit in-between the cooking units.

Includes things like tepan yaki plates, electric lava stone grills, griddles, deep fryers, normal induction cookers, or those wok induction cookers.

All of these are low volume articles, thus higher price already.
And the induction wok burners - last I checked - use specifically shaped induction coils, which are very low volume themselves as a result.
The electronics have to be specifically configured as a result aswell.
 
Re:#20

How is this a very poorly written article about induction? The owner of this restaurant and the local culinary school instructor were honestly relating their real world experiences with the conversion to induction in professional kitchens.

As far as the impact on the electric grid supply there are hundreds of restaurants in Sonoma Co. If they all convert to induction there very possibly could be a need for increased infrastructure to meet the increased demand.

From the photo in the article it would appear that this restaurant is using the type of induction units that are lower priced. The pandemic had a dramatic impact on the revenue of most restaurants so I imagine that may have been a deciding factor in buying induction units that were more reasonably priced to keep the overhead costs a low as possible.

In my opinion this restaurant owner should be applauded for trying to make the move to the future, but instead he’s being derided. He’s got first hand experience in a professional kitchen using induction. I can believe that the touch controls are failing because in this setting the chef’s are probably changing the temps frequently due to the volume of cooking they are doing. Plus in a busy kitchen with more than one chef working I can very well believe that having to stop a complicated process to replace the broken induction unit would sure throw a wrench into the works.

I thought that sharing this article here with members that are so interested in this topic would have been appreciated. This chef and restaurant owner is trying to move to the future. His observations should be of value to help other restaurateurs adjust to the change to induction.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 2/15/2023-13:16]
 
The real question is, why bother? My GE Profile Gas Convection Range from 2007, still functions and acts like new... all these years later. I've taken very good care of it, and kept it very clean.

I would be outlaying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for this "upgrade"... that is unnecessary. Not to mention, the costs to operate the electric oven, on a KWH basis, is SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than the cost of Natural Gas in my area.

The savings... that I would achieve, cooking on induction, would be minimal at best, and would not pay for itself at any point in the next 5 or 10 years.

It just doesn't make any sense to me. My GE Profile Range is still very pretty, and stainless. I'm not even quite sure a replacement would last as long as my current appliance.
 
I would not trust ANYTHING electrical with the Vollrath name on it. I have a Vollrath 120 volt 1800 watt induction unit that was fixed twice in its 4 year life before the electronic controls went and the manufacturer would no longer support it because they stated that the parts were more expensive than the unit itself. Granted, it was only a $500 unit, not a $5000 unit, but their customer support was for shit at best. In any forum about induction I smear their rotten reputation as far as I can. My Cook Tek Magna Ranges, which are analog controls with one dial and a switch to select power levels or thermostatic settings have held up well.

I saw a PBS show about restaurants and two guys bought an old building in an older part of town and wanted to create a small soup and sandwich restaurant in it. If they had gone with a regular gas-powered kitchen, the expense of putting in a commercial ventilation system would have been prohibitive to meet commercial kitchen standards, but for their their Cook Tek Magna Wave induction plates, they could have them on the counter in a food prep area of the restaurant's dining room so their electrical usage was much lower because they did not have to have a powerful exhaust system pulling the heated or cooled air out and the whole area was a comfortable temperature. Another factor to consider is that these units only need 15 amp 208-240 circuits.[this post was last edited: 2/15/2023-20:59]
 
Article in reply, 126

Should’ve been on the opinion page or letters to the editor that was not a seriously written article it would never appear in the New York Times, Washington post, etc.

This is the sad thing about journalism today in America that stuff like this makes it into print without any research fact, checking, etc.

John
 

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