Apartment dwellers sometimes seem convinced that it is impossible to electrify their buildings without constructing a new power station next door. I hear a number of recurring misconceptions and one of these is that the building can’t support induction cooktops.
This article shows that the switch is likely to be more straightforward than most expect, and it certainly won’t require a power station next door.
Gas cooktops can still be found in recently built apartment buildings, but are particularly common in older buildings. For the same reasons I described in a previous article on induction cooktop wiring, there is a misconception that induction cooktops are power guzzling appliances that will cause the building’s grid connection to melt down at dinner time.
A recurring concept in calculating the maximum demand of anything in an apartment building, be it electricity, gas, or water, is diversity. This is the idea that the use of appliances or fixtures in the building is scattered across time and location. Correctly accounting for diversity is incredibly important. Otherwise, you could end up spending far too much money on infrastructure to handle a peak demand level that never happens.
