Solar Induction Cooktop Calculator
Enter your cooktop wattage, daily cooking hours, and location — get panels needed, annual cost, and induction vs gas vs electric coil comparison.
How to Use This Calculator
Select your cooktop wattage
Induction cooktops range from 1,200W portable single-burners to 3,500W professional 4-burner units. The wattage rating is the maximum draw when all burners run at full power — most cooking happens at 50-70% of that maximum. Check your cooktop's spec label or owner's manual for the exact wattage. If you have a 4-burner unit rated at 2,400W, each burner draws up to 600W.
Enter burners used simultaneously and daily hours
Enter how many burners you typically run at the same time during a cooking session. Simple meals (pasta, eggs) use 1 burner; full dinners often use 2-3. Daily cooking hours is the total active time the cooktop runs — not calendar time in the kitchen. Most households cook 0.5-1.5 hours per day; families with children or people who cook from scratch run 1.5-3 hours.
Read the results and the comparison table
The results show daily and annual kWh, monthly and annual cost, panels needed, and a three-way cost comparison: induction vs electric coil vs gas. Induction is 5-10% more efficient than electric coil (same wattage accomplishes more cooking), and far more controllable than gas. The comparison uses a gas price of $1.35/therm and assumes 0.6 therms per hour of cooking.
The Formula
The 80% duty cycle reflects real cooking behavior — induction burners cycle on and off to maintain temperature rather than running continuously at full power. A simmer setting might only draw 20% of rated wattage; a boil setting draws 80-100%. The 80% average is conservative for typical mixed cooking. For batch cooking or pressure cooker use, actual duty cycle is higher.
Example
The Chen Family — Daily 2-burner cooking in Los Angeles
The Chens cook two meals a day on a 2,400W built-in induction cooktop, using 2 burners for 1.5 hours total. They pay $0.15/kWh in Los Angeles (5.6 PSH).
Result
One solar panel offsets the Chens' entire induction cooking energy use. The annual cost comparison is striking: induction at $79 vs gas at $444 — the induction cooktop saves $365/year vs cooking with gas at LA electricity rates. Cooking is responsible for only 3-5% of a typical home's electricity, which is why the panel count is low but the dedicated payback period is long. The panels also offset other home loads.
Why Off-Grid Induction Is Impractical
Induction cooktops are one of the few appliances where off-grid solar is genuinely impractical for most setups. Here's why:
- High instantaneous draw: A 3,500W cooktop at full power would drain a 100Ah 48V battery bank in under 2 hours at 100% discharge — but useful capacity with 50% DoD is under 1 hour.
- Pure sine wave required: Induction uses high-frequency magnetic fields controlled by sensitive electronics. Modified sine wave inverters create interference that can damage the control board or cause erratic behavior.
- Battery sizing becomes enormous: Cooking at peak draw for 1.5 hours daily requires a battery bank sized for that draw — which would cost $3,000-8,000 in lithium batteries for a 3,500W cooktop.
- Grid-tied is the right approach: Use induction on a grid-tied solar system. Your panels offset the energy over time; you draw from the grid during the brief high-power cooking peaks.
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