Fit-out decisions
The hob choice that sets your ventilation load, your infrastructure bill and a decade of energy costs. The honest case for each - and where hybrids win.
Fit-out decisions
Gas versus induction reads like a cooking preference. On a new fit-out it is really a building-services decision: it sets the ventilation load, the gas or electrical infrastructure, the interlock requirements, the working temperature of the room and a decade of energy bills. The physics is lopsided - induction puts 85-90% of its energy into the pan, a commercial gas burner more like 40-55% - but UK energy pricing pushes hard the other way, and the right answer depends on which pressures your site actually faces.
Option one
Gas wins on unit price and on habit. A kilowatt-hour of gas costs a fraction of a kilowatt-hour of electricity on current UK caps - roughly 5.5p against 25-26p - so even at half the efficiency, gas heat in the pan is usually cheaper heat. Kit is cheaper to buy, any pan works on it, brigades know it, and high-output burners still recover faster under a hammering than most induction hobs at the same price point.
The costs arrive around the flame rather than through the meter. A gas cookline needs a BS 6173 interlock proving the extraction runs before gas flows, ventilation sized for combustion products as well as cooking effluent, and a room that absorbs everything the burners throw past the pans - half or more of the energy input ends up as heat, moisture and combustion gases the canopy must capture. That is more fan power, more make-up air, a hotter brigade, and a duct that loads with grease carried on a much larger airflow.
Option two
Induction wins on efficiency and on the room. With most of the energy going into the pan and no combustion, the kitchen runs cooler and the ventilation problem shrinks - guidance built on the DW172 specification typically sizes gas-heavy kitchens at 30-60 air changes an hour, and an electric line sits at the low end of that with smaller fans doing less work. No interlock, no gas pipework, no naked flame near the fryers, instant and repeatable power levels, and a flat surface that wipes clean in minutes.
The bill for those advantages is upfront and electrical. Commercial induction suites cost more than equivalent gas ranges, need serious three-phase supply that older buildings may lack, and only work with ferrous pans - a stock of aluminium and copper becomes scrap on changeover day. And every kilowatt-hour drawn costs four to five times a kilowatt-hour of gas, so the efficiency advantage is spent buying back the tariff gap rather than banked as savings.
There is also a direction-of-travel argument that sits outside this year's tariffs. New commercial developments increasingly arrive without gas at all, landlords and planning conditions lean toward all-electric fit-outs, and a lease or franchise agreement signed today may outlive the assumptions behind the current price gap. A fit-out is a ten-to-fifteen-year decision on kit that lasts that long; the question is not only which fuel is cheaper now, but which kitchen is easier to insure, let, staff and sell at the far end of it.
Side by side
Most new-build kitchens land on a hybrid: induction for the sauce and simmer stations where control and comfort matter, gas kept for the one or two stations the menu genuinely needs it. Whichever way the balance falls, decide it before the services are routed - planning the layout around extraction and gas is cheap on paper and brutal in retrofit. And remember the choice you are partly making is thermal: a gas line pushes far more heat into the room, with all the costs we set out in the hidden cost of a hot, poorly ventilated kitchen. Whichever line you fit, the canopy above it still loads with grease - our TR19 Grease extraction cleaning covers both.
Questions
Per unit of heat in the pan, usually not - electricity costs four to five times as much per kWh as gas on current caps, which outweighs induction's roughly double efficiency at the hob itself. Induction claws back ground through the room: smaller ventilation loads, less wasted heat to remove, faster cooking and lower cleaning time. On whole-site numbers the two often land closer than the tariff gap suggests, but pure running cost still tends to favour gas.
Yes. Induction removes combustion products, but cooking effluent - grease aerosol, steam, odour - comes from the food and the oil, not the fuel. Frying on induction loads a canopy with grease just as frying on gas does, so capture, filtration and TR19 Grease cleaning still apply; the system can simply be sized smaller because it is not also handling burner heat and combustion gases.
Physically yes, but the electrical supply decides whether it is sensible. A full induction line can demand more three-phase capacity than an older building has spare, and the upgrade can dwarf the equipment cost. Conversions work best done zone by zone - induction on the stations that benefit most - or timed to a refit when the supply, the layout and the ventilation are being reworked anyway.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
TR19 Grease extraction cleaning for every kind of cookline - intervals banded to your cooking hours, certificate supplied for insurer and fire risk assessment.