Induction cook top

It is possible, absolutely! Is it practical, now that is the real question.

A portable, counter top induction cook appliance will draw 1800 watts at 120 volts. How big is your inverter and battery bank?

DownTheAvenue wrote:
It is possible, absolutely! Is it practical, now that is the real question.

A portable, counter top induction cook appliance will draw 1800 watts at 120 volts. How big is your inverter and battery bank?

I was just looking at a new rv and thats what was there......so dry camping is out....

I use an induction cooker often. I don't use it on high much unless boiling water.
So you can probably use it for frying eggs, etc. Four batteries would be better.
Also, why not run the genset when cooking?

Big Katuna wrote:
I use an induction cooker often. I don't use it on high much unless boiling water.
So you can probably use it for frying eggs, etc. Four batteries would be better.
Also, why not run the genset when cooking?

No generator installed....

With no generator how are you going to charge the batteries while dry camping?
I would buy a unit with a generator or hook up to Elec etc.

No Solar panels either?

might be an all electric 5th wheel

What type of RV. They are putting the induction cooktops in new ones now. Roadtrek does it, but they usually have more than just a couple of batteries. They also have solar and a generator. Another thing to consider is that the wattage is "up to". They also do not maintain that wattage for long periods of time. They cook faster, so usage time is less than a traditional electric cooktop.

We have a Summitt SINC2B120 in our MH. It has two burners. The back on is 1800 max and the front one is 1300 watts max. The front burner has 6 power levels or about 216 watts each. The back one has 8 power levels or about 225 watts each.

We never use the back burner because the front one cooks so fast. The fron burner we used on level 6 once for a short period to get it hot fast then back down to 3 or 4. With our pans it's faster then our gas stove. We use pans that cover the burner area but no more or less. That's the most efficient. We also generally try to keep the height of the pan as short as possible. The higher parts of the pan aren't being heated by induction but they represent a thermal mass you'd have to heat up (waste energy).

I haven't timed it but I'm sure we could heat two fried eggs on setting 4 in less then 5 minutes. That's 864 watts for 5 minutes or the same as 72 watts for an hour or 6 amp hours.

If you are dry camping, relying on an induction cooktop is kind of marginal with only 2 batteries and no generator. At a minimum you would need a 2000 watt inverter and that wattage would draw about 170 amps from your batteries. I don't think that convention deep cycle batteries could deliver that much amperage. You could compensate by using lower power levels but that would require longer heating times.

Perhaps a better approach would be to buy a Coleman (or equivalent) camping stove that uses butane cylinders for dry camping. Those stoves are simple and reliable but you would want to provide ventilation when they are in use.