These stoves appear to have advantages over thermal stoves such as better heat transfer resulting in instant heating .
I would assume that they are more efficient as well??
They are pretty efficient, my 4 plate Bosch induction stove just came with a regular 16A plug to stick into the wall.
And adjustable… You can increase or decrease the wattage used by pressing a + or - button. I have an elderly lady client that uses her induction plate on a 1200va Multiplus during load shead. She just decrease the setting whenever she uses the plate.
They are definitely more efficient, since they are using electromagnetic induction to heat the metal of the pot directly. i.e. They don’t heat a hot-plate to a high temperature and then rely on convection to heat the pot, losing a lot of energy in the process.
The efficiency of cooking is pretty much a measure of how much of the energy that you start with actually ends up in the food.
Cooking on gas is therefore actually the LEAST efficient, because you have very poor efficiency from the flame into the container. With a flat-plate electrical, it is better, but you still have a transfer interface between two metal surfaces. With the induction stove, the heat is generated inside the utensil itself, which means the only remaining interface is between the utensil and the food.
As always, at each interface point, some of the energy just buggers off into space, while some actually goes where you want it to.
On this topic, that is another place where I find that my cooking style is different from my wife’s. When I cook rice (for example), I keep the (gas) flame low enough that the lid can stay on the pot without it boiling over. You literally only need enough heat in there to keep the water boiling, and the rice will finish cooking. When my wife cooks rice, she has the flame turned up and the lid of the utensil is partially off to prevent it boiling over.
Her way is faster. That is for sure. But common sense dictates that a lot of energy is wasted into turning water into vapour instead of cooking the rice… 
(It’s not the kind of thing I care about enough to make a ruckus though… cooking on gas is cheap enough despite the various inefficiencies to just enjoy it).
Top top: Buy a rice cooker. Perfect rice, every time.
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Yeah, that’s another awesome piece of 1950s technology. See here:
