Induction Cooking

PODebbie2021 · Dec 16, 2021

I have always used propane for cooking. My son-in-law is installing solar for me. I will have 400 watts on the roof and 200 amps Battleborn batteries. Can I cook 2 meals a day and coffee 3 times a day? I was told that I can run the van engine and use the dc to dc charger while food is cooking. Like people using a generator for air conditioning. Wanting to know if I need to take my propane stove and tank as a backup or will my backpacking stove and small canister be enough for emergencies. Thanks for your help.

gizmotron · Dec 16, 2021

You want to know the watt usage for the induction cooktop. I have a flat griddle that makes up for three fry pans and runs 1300 watts on 110 AC. I use it for about 10 minutes at breakfast. I wish I had this stuff memorized. I think that this would burn about 1 amp hour per minute from my 200 amp hour LIfepo4 battery. So Breakfast takes it down 5%. I haven't tested my coffee pot yet but I'll bet its at least 1000 watts on 110 AC. So I will just let that stand at one amp hour per minute also. So that would take another 5% for all the coffee that I drink in a day. So I would guess roughly that your stuff might take down the battery about 15% for what you listed.

I'll bet I'm way off base on this. It would be nice to know from solar experts here.

PODebbie2021 · Dec 16, 2021

I haven’t purchased the Induction cooktop yet. Was wondering if a hot plate used the same amount but just takes longer so the battery usage is the same. I don’t know if the alternator charges a rate high enough to use it as a pass-through type of energy. I am clueless

gizmotron · Dec 16, 2021

I found what I was looking for on YouTube in that a person was using a pressure cooker to make roast with. He went through the whole thing about amp hours per minute. There are explanations of what happens and how much of the batteries are effected by large wattage appliances.

I would love a link to this without having to take a course in physics.

Frood · Dec 16, 2021

PODebbie2021 said:
I have always used propane for cooking. My son-in-law is installing solar for me. I will have 400 watts on the roof and 200 amps Battleborn batteries. Can I cook 2 meals a day and coffee 3 times a day? I was told that I can run the van engine and use the dc to dc charger while food is cooking. Like people using a generator for air conditioning. Wanting to know if I need to take my propane stove and tank as a backup or will my backpacking stove and small canister be enough for emergencies. Thanks for your help.

You have about 2400 Watt Hours of storage in your batteries. With 400 watts of solar on your roof, with 6 hours of full sun per day, you will
be able to fully charge your batteries from empty (400 watts x 6 hours = 2400 total watts). If your electric cooking devices are rated at
1000 watts then you will use 1000 watts of power if you run your devices for 1 hour (you will use more actually due to converting from DC
to AC). You should theoretically have more than enough power as long as you get 6 hours of sun per day, but the only way to be sure is to
check the wattage of your appliances, add up the hours you will be using each one each day, and see if your power storage (your batteries... 200 Amp hours x 12V = 2400 Watts power storage) is large enough to match the power usage.