Viking has burners rated from 18,500 BTU all the way up and beyond 30,000 BTU. Converting that to electrical power comes up with 18,500 BTU -> 5421.79 Watts, or about 22 Amps at 240 Volts. Most breakers on stoves are around 40 amps, some more. Note also, I only considered the 18,500 BTU burner. You can run all burners simultaneously on a gas stove without ‘blowing breakers’.(something that was useful when preparing food for our family Christmas dinner).
[/quote]
Glad you mentioned this. We bought the Viking so many years ago that I had forgotten that a driving reason was the Viking BTUs: they are way over what the average brand name cooktop can handle. My wife loved that!
And it had more burners for roughly the same counter space. Which does come in handy a handful of times per year.
[quote=ucodegen]
The induction is more efficient in transferring heat energy to the pot, but his numbers 60% on gas stove are a bit misleading.
[/quote]
Now that you mention it, I do recall we had noticed that induction required special pots/pans to get the quick heating which was yet another reason we steered clear of induction.
[quote=ucodegen]
Induction cooktops have to be glass. It is high strength tempered glass, but it still has many problems of glass – including breaking and scratching. This is partially why it is not used in restaurants – where pots/pans etc may come down a little hard in the surface and there is a high potential for wear. In short order, the glass may not look so nice.
[/quote]
I don’t think we took this into consideration, but it is another good differentiator.
Nothing is perfect and everything has pros and cons, but for us gas is the clear winner. Your mileage may vary.