Gas vs. Electric kettle?

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With a large leisure battery, good solar, and the usual split charge relay, electricity is essentially "free", so wondering why not a small electric kettle rather than using the gas hob? Just for the odd cup of tea/coffee and instant soups, etc. (Van has a 3KVA inverter, but realistically only looking at a small 1-2Kw kettle)

Anyone do this or am I just bonkers?

Cheers,

-G
 
drogon said:
With a large leisure battery, good solar, and the usual split charge relay, electricity is essentially "free", so wondering why not a small electric kettle rather than using the gas hob? Just for the odd cup of tea/coffee and instant soups, etc. (Van has a 3KVA inverter, but realistically only looking at a small 1-2Kw kettle)

Anyone do this or am I just bonkers?

Cheers,

-G
Click to expand...
I use an 500W Induction Hob with the stovetop kettle. Induction Hob just as fast as Electric Kettle of same power, but more flexible (can use for cooking as well) and less utensils (use same kettle for electric and gas).
 
Remember a 2kw kettle running via an inverter will be drawing almost 200 amp from your batteries. Make sure the cable from the battery to the inverter is up to it.

To boil a cup of water requires about 50 W of energy. From a 12v supply this draws around 4ah.
 
drogon said:
With a large leisure battery, good solar, and the usual split charge relay, electricity is essentially "free", so wondering why not a small electric kettle rather than using the gas hob? Just for the odd cup of tea/coffee and instant soups, etc. (Van has a 3KVA inverter, but realistically only looking at a small 1-2Kw kettle)

Anyone do this or am I just bonkers?

Cheers,

-G
Click to expand...
When we built our transit Jumbo ...we built it to be self sufficient power wise and all electric cooking (low wattage kettle/toaster/slow cooker/microwave )
Worked fantastic for us (even in winter when solar is doing square route of sod all )
Though in winter the heavy duty alternator and VSR shouldered the bulk of the work of charging AND we did,move on every couple of days ...

So YES it can be done
BUT you need to be set up to do it if you want to do it reliably in winter ....
 
If I idle the engine then switch on the relay to the leisure battery, The engine revs slow. It is small but my estimate is about 0.5% of mpg. That is nothing but so is the cost of lpg. It is just physics, the conservation of energy.
Everyone to their own, whatever is convenient, I debate an electric heat use for summer solar, otherwise wasted after the battery is full.
 
 
There are 700w camping kettles which give about 2/3 cups, you will require a inverter about 1200w, just remember a 700w kettle will take twice as long to boil as a 2300w big one, so the same amount of battery juice is used.
 
I use a 500w kettle off my EcoFlow river pro, the river flow charges from solar/12v it’s a bit slow but I turn it on from my phone while still in bed, do my ablutions, pour an orange juice and put the radio on and then pour a tea
 
 
Unable to use an induction hob, as has been said many, many times. BUT I do use leccy whenever possible*. Kettle, hot plate, George Foreman, toaster, and now,t he Air Fryer. Not all at the same time,now that would be silly.
This free electricity has cost me a fortune. Thinking of using it to heat water in the Truma, when driving, if the batteries are full.

* When this new inverter finally gets fitted. :mad::mad::mad:
 
We have a 900W "Kampa" brand electric kettle that we use when on EHU. If we had a few kWh of leisure batteries and a decent inverter, we'd use it all the time. However, we use a gas stovetop kettle when off-grid. With 6kg Calorlite exchange cylinders costing £30-ish, a few drops of diesel to put enough charge in your batteries to boil a kettle seems a bit of a bargain! (just sayin')
 
No thoughts here of using leccy for any form of cooking !
We have 2x LB so could do but would need.
1 Suitable inverter connected properly.
2 Induction hob and or.
3 low wattage kettle.
4 coffee machine.
All costly and clutter.

We cook very well using the ridge monkey and dutch oven as well as the usual.
Aeropress for good coffee.
If we had loadsasolar it might be worth it if lpg a problem.
We can go 1 month+ with 2x11kg lpg refillable although we try to top up after swapping from empty tank to full tank (3weeks).
I do appreciate the advantages of an induction hob and a posh coffee machine but.....not 4 us !
And yes We do have clutter. Now dumped the cadac but have a small, folding charcoal bbq !
 
GeoffL said:
We have a 900W "Kampa" brand electric kettle that we use when on EHU. If we had a few kWh of leisure batteries and a decent inverter, we'd use it all the time. However, we use a gas stovetop kettle when off-grid. With 6kg Calorlite exchange cylinders costing £30-ish, a few drops of diesel to put enough charge in your batteries to boil a kettle seems a bit of a bargain! (just sayin')
Click to expand...
Not a good idea to start an engine of load for battery charging,
 
Still use gas kettle, warms van up nicely in the morning.
Looking forward to getting an induction hob though when I have enough ooomphh, seems the way forward.
 
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