Cook Top
- Solid disk elements are easier to clean and perhaps neater looking, but they heat up more slowly than electric coil burners. Solid disk burners generally use higher wattage elements—and more energy—than coil burners. Also, if you don’t have good contact between pans and disk burners (i.e. flat bottom pans), cooking performance and energy efficiency are greatly reduced.
- Radiant elements under ceramic glass offer easy cleaning, and they heat faster than solid disks but not as fast as coil burners. They are more energy efficient than disk and coil-type burners, but flat pans are necessary to achieve this efficiency.
- Halogen element cook tops use a halogen lamp under glass as the heat source. These elements heat very quickly but are no more efficient than radiant elements and are much more costly.
- Induction elements use a new technology that allows transfer of electromagnetic energy directly to the cooking pan. Heat is only transferred where contact is made. Once the pan is removed from the element, the heat dissipates almost immediately. Induction cook tops use as much as 50 percent less energy than traditional coil burner cook tops. The only drawback with these cook tops is that they only function with “iron based” cookware; for example, cast iron, stainless steel, or enameled iron.
- Gas cook tops provide maximum heat in an instant. They have instant cool down and stop cooking as soon as you turn off the burner. They also provide more even cooking since the flame is adjustable to the pan size.
What Does This Cost?
To help determine your annual cooktop operating cost, use this Web site.
