Sam D’Amico, Founder of Impulse Labs — A battery-powered stove sounds like a gag. After talking with Sam D’Amico, founder of Impulse Labs, it’s clever solution to a nagging problem. Induction beats gas on power and control, but most kitchens can’t install it.
Induction requires a new high-amp circuit, sometimes a new panel, and sometimes an appointment with your utility. Impulse puts just over 3 kilowatt-hours in the actual cooktop itself. This means induction-level power from a standard 110-volt outlet. It pushes more heat into the pan than the grid will allow, but can even send power back into the house.
The conversation runs through three ideas: why induction lost the marketing fight, what the battery actually does, and why the next appliances should carry their own storage instead of waiting for a Powerwall.
D’Amico spends the first stretch drawing a line people keep missing. Radiant electric coils are slow and imprecise. Induction sends immediate power to the pan and changes to variable temperatures instantly.
Chefs who know the difference still want gas for a few tricks, lighting oil for a wok, warming tortillas. But those are edge cases, he says. A torch handles them.
What induction gives you is an ultra low simmer a flame can’t hold and, at the top end, 50 to 100 percent more power at the pan than a typical 15,000 BTU burner. Gas is about 40 percent efficient. Induction is about 90. The cooktop stays relatively cool but the pan gets the heat.
Practically, water boils about twice as fast on ordinary induction as on gas.
The remaining barrier is the electrician. A new 60-amp circuit is in the neighborhood of an EV charger. D’Amico’s neighbor in San Francisco could get the permits. Getting PG&E to add service was months out and more than $10,000. Rewiring the run to the panel is a few hundred dollars. A new panel is a couple thousand. The street connection is the expensive one. Do that for a stove and a Tesla at the same time and the house runs out of amps.
Impulse is looking at just over 3 kWh in the cooktop, about three home meals, or a couple of days of useful cooking if the power goes out. Plug the stove into 110 volts and a single burner at just below gas-level high can run indefinitely. Real cooking has so many pauses that D’Amico’s lab had a hard time draining the pack with the outlet still charging it.
Because the battery, not the circuit, supplies the peak, Impulse can boil water about three times as fast as a normal induction cooktop. One of the investors posted a side-by-side with a gas stove. Commenters called the video fake and misread a Celsius thermometer.
On a 220-volt connection the same pack can push power back into the house, shift cooking off peak rates, and, if you stack units in an apartment building, behave like a virtual backup generator. D’Amico’s longer bet is that there are more stove, oven, and water-heater slots than there are Powerwalls, so storage should live in the appliances people already buy.
The cooktop is their first bet but a range with an oven is next. He is also interested in tankless water heaters that sit next to the shower. Lithium ion phosphate cells are meant to be swappable and last through thousands of cycles. In this use, a meal is about 1 kWh plus whatever the outlet puts back, so aging to 80 percent capacity is something a home cook is unlikely to notice.
The part that sounds like science fiction is the cookware. An induction stove can function like a wireless charger for pots. Pots don’t talk back but D’Amico wants them to. In theory, one could set down a kettle and the stove recognizes it and runs a sequence. Rice cookers and fancy kettles become modes instead of extra appliances. When asked about launch timing he stayed quiet.
Will it stick? People won’t buy because it’s good for the planet, it’s gotta work like a dream. If D’Amico builds something that humiliates gas on performance, they’ll come for it.
Learn more about Sam D’Amico and Impulse Labs at impulselabs.com.
The original show notes were lost. This summary was written by Ai and edited by a human.
