Glas ceramic hob Steba HK 30

In order to cook in our Toyota Hilux and Toyota Hiace we use a glass ceramic hob Steba HK 30 that – according to the manufacturer – allows for precise adjustment of the power consumption from a company called Steba. However, in reality these ratings seem to be different. In this article, I give an overview of the energy ratings I measured.

Observed Power Consumption

The hob has 2 rings with a nominal rating of

• Ring 1
  100w, 400W, 600W, 700W, 800W, 900W, 1’000W
• Ring 2
  200W, 800W, 1’200W, 1’400W, 1’600W, 1’800W, 2’000W

In the table below you see the actual values I measured in comparison to the nominal values as shown on the hob. For our Victron MultiPlus Compact 24/1600/40-16 the highest setting is on Ring 2 with 1600W nominal.

Ring	Wnominal	Waverage	Wmin	Wmax
0	0	0	0.4	4.1
1	100	200	225	254
2	200	450	417	459
1	400	400	375	409
1	600	475	450	477
1	700	600	580	602
1	800	700	708	731
2	800	750	699	770
1	900	860	850	863
1	1’000	930	932	934
2	1’200	900	863	901
2	1’400	1’150	1’108	1’148
2	1’600	1’400	1’368	1’396
2	1’800	1’650	1’645	1’659
2	2’000	1’800	1’787	1’795

Other Observations

There are a couple of (negative) things that I noticed when using this hob:

1. When using the outer Ring 2 (or the full hob) the lowest level you can choose is 200W or then already 800W which turns out to be too much when trying to cook for a longer period of time. In my case, I use a large cast iron pot and let it cook for 4h to 5h. With 200W it was too little and with 800W it effectively started burning its contents at the bottom.
2. After 2h – 3h of constant use the hob once switched off after the pot boild over and spilled sauce on the hob. But I do not know if this was just a coincidence. After turning it back on it worked without interruption for another 2h – 3h.
3. The hob pulses when heating, i.e. turning the heating rings on an off very quickly. This seemed to stress the inverter when it was connected to mains (which was another inverter on batteries). For whatever reason it quite often drew power from the battery instead from mains.
4. After use the hob keeps a ventilator running for approximately 15min. It is rather on the loud side but not necessarily disturbing. Power draw during the cool down phase is 4W. When cooking something on the move one has to take that duration into consideration before switching it off.
5. The device is relatively bulky for that it is meant for only a single pot.

Summary

Most of the devices are not perfect (as described in the observations above). But all in all I really like the hob and we use it quite often. It is easy to clean and usable over several hours of constant use. Bon appetit.

Cooking with Neutrik PowerCon True1 Top in our Toyota Hilux pic.twitter.com/emNHULlda6

— Loch Watenan (@LWatenan) February 14, 2023

Addendum

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Corrigendum

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