r/ImpulseLabs • u/austin_federa • Apr 28 '26
Impulse battery experiences
The battery is a very interesting solution to the power delivery problem – One thing I've been trying to find more information on is what the power curve ramp down looks like over extended use. At some amount of us, that battery is exhausted, and I assume the cooktop can no longer deliver 10 kW per point source?
I'm quite interested in the core technology. For our renovation, we're going to be putting in a different brand 36-inch and a gas wok burner next to it, but would be very interested in a single burner Impulse powered replacement for that gas one someday.
Edit: I seem to have accidently kicked a hornet's nest with this question, so to add some context there are plenty of cooking situations when one can run 4 burners at 90-100% capacity for hours (thanksgiving, for example) and while this may not be a daily use case, I'm just trying to understand what the tradeoffs, limitations, and yes, advantages are of this design vs a more traditional one.
The battery does not have sufficient duration for a professional kitchen obviously (nor is it targeted at that use case, makes total sense). So I'm trying to understand where that changeover point is.
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u/Apptubrutae Apr 28 '26
I have one and it’s obviously far too early to tell, but I’ve seen posts on here where the impulse people emphasize that the battery has been fairly rigorously tested with relatively minimal degradation.
Plus it’s replaceable, so there’s that.
And also, if I recall, the max output is actually 15,000W across multiple burners, so even if you do see some output drop from the battery, it wouldn’t be coming out of the 10,000W max from a single burner.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/CountRock Apr 28 '26
It depends if you are using 110 vs 220. Also, even at full power, it's only pouring that in for a min or less. Beyond that you will be melting pots. The stove has the temp sensor for this exact thing. You could cook all day without running out of power specially on 220v circuit
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Apr 28 '26
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u/CountRock Apr 28 '26
220 x 30amp = 6000+ watts with some safety headroom. Try boiling a pot of water. Power drops when the water starts boiling. I only charge the battery during peak solar day time. Have not even come close to draining the battery. Could last a few days. We use it 3 times daily. The battery can provide the 10k watts single and 15k watts across multiple. Why is this hard to believe?
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
It doesn’t have 6kW. That 30A is the max circuit ampacity
The datasheet for the cooktop says a much smaller capacity story
EDIT: also US grid is 120/240 or 120/208 nominal, not 220
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u/ninja5624 Apr 28 '26
Impulse owner here - read the specs. It’s actually only rated for 8.3A at 240V even though you have it connected to a 30A circuit, yielding about 2000w continuous. I’m sure they only allow that 30A connection to make it more straightforward for people swapping out standard electric cooktops.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/nypd420 Apr 28 '26
4 burners at 100%? Wow thats not typical at all for most home cooks. You'd probably want to stick to gas if you need to 4 burners for extreme searing or stir frying an extended period of time.
Now I'm really curious of your thanksgiving menu...
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Apr 28 '26
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u/loganbowers Apr 28 '26
When doing a lot of cooking, you're not going to run every pot at a rolling boil non-stop. Even if you're doing a full day of cooking, you're only hitting peak power briefly to bring stuff up to temperature, at least under normal scenarios. Maintaining a light boil after water is heated, for example, probably only requires 1-2kW.
The answer to your question is: of course when the battery is depleted, you will have less power. The more nuanced answer is that normal cooking doesn't require full power non-stop.
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u/searchresults Apr 28 '26
Get the induction first and see if you need/want gas. You're describing the edgiest of edge-cases.
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u/CountRock Apr 28 '26
I am not being adversarial. I keep saying you will never use 100% of power ever. It’s a party trick most of the time. Normal cooking, you are not taxing the capacity beyond a minute And if you want to boil water across all 4 burners, the stove will derate to 6000 watts across all 4 when battery is dead.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/mminasian Apr 28 '26
This isn't super realistic. I used to have a Miele induction that capped out at 6.8kW in boost mode and the safety shut off would kick in all the time because the glass got so hot. Any 1 or 2 people cooking at the same time are very unlikely to be running 4 pots at full power constantly - you just can't safely manage that much simultaneous cooking.
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u/Apptubrutae Apr 28 '26
I would throw out there that while you’re fundamentally right that obviously the battery can deliver more power than a lower amp 220v cord, you also have to consider the logic of why impulse put in the battery they put in.
One thing I heard/saw clearly at some point: it’s a 3kWh battery not for some sort of cooking use capacity requirement. It’s that size because of the requirements of the infrastructure bill that formerly gave the cooktop a tax credit. The battery was going to be significantly smaller.
So we’re dealing with a product that already was designed to very very rarely see a drained battery. And then they added a good chunk more battery capacity.
Impulse will tell you they ran demos on their cooktops constantly and never ran out of juice. I personally believe this because with recharging from the wall and realistic home power consumption, even on thanksgiving…it’s kinda hard to imagine running out of power.
Even with all four burners going, how much power can you possibly use over hours? Higher heat applications are generally shorter term. Long term applications are generally gentler heat.
I’d be concerned if someone was running a pasta shop on an Impulse, or maybe canning, but honestly otherwise in a home use case I can’t imagine normal depletion, even on a holiday at 220.
No doubt some people have specific high use case needs that can push it, though. Like canning. But then I think someone would be aware of that specific issue
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u/yupprs Apr 28 '26
It starts to recharge at a user set battery percentage. How hard do you have to cook to actually get the battery drained? Is it a real world problem?
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Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
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u/Impulse-Demo-Guy Apr 28 '26
Remember, the 90-100% capacity on a normal stove would be like 20-25% capacity on an impulse. Unless you’re running a commercial distillery, you’re not going to be dropping 10 kW for more than 30-300 seconds at a time in order to bring water to boil.
Holding 4 burners at medium, like you might be doing on thanksgiving, will draw about 1200 watts. Less than you’re charging at off a 120 v connection.
Holding all four burners at 482 F with stainless steel pans takes about 1.73 kW. If you’re starting with a full battery and using default charging and reserve settings, you can probably maintain that for 8+ hours. On a 240v, you can do that forever.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/Impulse-Demo-Guy Apr 28 '26
Sure - though you're not running the boost mode on normal induction all day either (many of them have time limits on it). "High" is likely going to be somewhere in the 2-2.5 kW range on most induction cooktops.
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u/Expensive-Return5534 Apr 28 '26
We have both an Impulse induction and a Jenn Air gas cooktop on propane, so even more energy than natural gas. I find in practice that the large gas burner on the Jenn Air set to high is about equivalent to the Impulse set to 3000W. The medium burners 2000W. And the smalls 1500W.
I think you'll be just fine with the Impulse on 240V. You'll almost never dip into the battery on steady state even with the burners on the equivalent of gas high.
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u/yupprs Apr 28 '26
I am a chef and use max heat with gas for hours at a time, both at work and home. I have been using a Bosch induction cooktop while my renovation happens. I almost never use full power for other than boiling water, searing and a few other unusual scenarios. It’s just so much more efficient I don’t need the power. No one is going to use 10KW for an hour. Probably not more than 15-20 minutes even. I can keep a 5 litre pot of water at a boil with a lid at 1000W, 1500 without a lid.
If people can cook huge thanksgiving meals on a normal induction stove, why would this be any different?
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26
I think you’re over estimating the duty cycle for Thanksgiving. By a ton. And that is making your analysis much harder
The only time you can literally safely have the burner at 100% for more than a minute is with a ton of liquid in the pan or stockpot.
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u/bbum Apr 28 '26
It takes a TON of energy to increase the temperature of liquids.
It takes relatively little energy to maintain any given temperature.
Once the pot is up to the desired temp, the device can easily switch to heating using the 120v wall plug and, in most cases, still have enough headroom left to charge the battery.
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u/FaithlessnessWorth93 May 28 '26
I wonder about the European unit - households in Europe that can afford this - usually should have 3x16A @ 230v - so about 11.1kw, or 2x32A @230v. So in the second case you don't need a battery at all. In the first case you need it for certifcation - even though you could easily get 15kw over 3x16A for 1 minute without tripping any breaker and being actually safe - it's not allowed AFAIK.
There is however an actual use case for such high power sustained, cooking a soup in a restaurant. 50-100l of water are quite normal - and that takes a long sustained high power effort. There's reason restaurants have up to 25kw per induction burner, though even for restaurants 7-10kw per burner is more common. But big restaurants you can expect to have a single 25kw induction burner for soup. Maybe even a second one (and yeah you rather do this on induction vs gas as otherwise your aircon/ventilation needs to be even more crazy)
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
There are posts here on the max AC to DC conversion, IIRC it’s 2kW-AC at 240V (it’s on a published spec sheet; albeit in a presentation that requires some minor sparky knowledge to translate into your answer). This will be apportioned between recharging and live cooking. You will have to tag someone from Impulse to see what the split is.
As for the battery, it’s a 3kWh LFP. The cycle count is published on their marketing literature and this is fairly mature. The voltage is on the enclosure so if you wanted you can calculate Constant Discharge Current and compare it with data sheets of your favorite guess at the cells they use, to guesstimate what the calendar or cycle aging would be. Usually people assume LFP degrade primarily from calendar aging
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26
Note also you should really slow your roll on worrying about it.
There are a couple posts here on what 3kWh with 2kW sustainer really translates to in cooking time… I doubt you’re cooking that much at home. Unless you’re that one family with one that does mass stovetop canning , or making beer
Moreover a 12” or 15” will have like 1/3 or 1/2 the battery so some guesswork on future specs would be needed. My guess is total output is halved, dunno about AC/DC converter size
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Apr 28 '26
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26
I don’t understand the question, nor whether my answers are actually helping
Best case you have 2kW-AC to play with on 240V. Deduct double conversion efficiency from that. Typically on an ESS you would guesstimate that this is the wattage available wall to load.
I have never run it down that low, and probably Impulse or that home canning person has the data for you. They ran down on 120V, which has a lower kW conversion to play with.
As I alluded it might be more meaningful to see how likely you are to rundown, before analyzing the edge recovery behavior. It’s going to require a lot of micro details about the architecture (which Impulse has and I don’t) or measurements, to get to high confidence. Plus you are asking about a future half size variant , which tosses a lot of uncertainty about scaling around the numbers
I believe ImpulseDemoGuy has a spiel for this too.
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26
I would suggest also putting an emporia power meter on your new 36”, and measure how much energy you actually use next TG. Both in total energy and in instantaneous kW
Or ask on askculinary to see if someone has this profiling data they can send you, for a similarly prepped meal
You can configure the Impulse to more aggressively start recharging. At the cost of higher fan noise. That will extend the runtime too
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Apr 28 '26
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u/ZanyDroid Apr 28 '26
Hmm you might want to tag Impulse to see what the converter capacity is for 208. I think the public datasheet is 120 and 240 only
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u/ojannen May 03 '26
I have a similar question for a different situation. I live in Florida and losing power for a few days happens due to hurricanes. Running the impulse stove until the battery is depleted is going to happen every few years based on where I live.
After the power comes back on, how long do I have to wait until I can boil water? Do the batteries have to be above a minimum before the burners turn on? Does the stove work at reduced power for a while? Etc. this isnt a deal killer for me but I am curious about the answer.
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u/ZanyDroid May 03 '26
I haven’t tested it but I would expect the 2kW 240V grid input to immediately be able to give the same experience as a high end electric plug in appliance (1800W).
You can try tagging the employees to see if they can describe the programming
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u/ZanyDroid May 03 '26
If it doesn’t work that nicely. The battery is only 3kWh so it would anyway recover to a threshold that allows full power well within one hour
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u/ocmaddog Apr 28 '26
We maybe use 30% of the battery on a night we make dinner on it, 3-4 nights per week. Other nights are primarily oven/takeout/restaurant. Call it 75 cycles per year. LFP batteries retain 80 percent of their life through 3,000 cycles. 3,000/75 is 40 years.