Cooking Efficiently: 3-stone fires, biomass & hobs | Permaculture Magazine

Cooking Efficiently: 3-stone fires, biomass & hobs | Permaculture Magazine

The low efficiency of modern cooking devices may surprise people, as these are not the figures that are usually presented in sales brochures or consumer reports. For example, the Californian Consumer Energy Center gives an efficiency level of 90% for an electric induction cooker, 65% for a standard electric range, and 55% for a gas burner. [10]

Power Conversion LossesThe main discrepancy with these figures is caused when one doesn't take into account that electricity first needs to be produced in power plants which sometimes convert less than a third of the primary energy into electricity [11]. This is not an issue with gas or biomass stoves, where a primary fuel is directly converted into heat for cooking.