Impulse put a 3kWh battery inside its cooktop so induction runs on a plain 120V outlet

Induction is the best cooking technology on the market, and buildings everywhere are supposed to electrify. But most American kitchens were wired decades ago: a standard outlet delivers 120 volts at a couple of kilowatts, while real induction ranges expect a 240V circuit. Going electric the normal way means an electrician, a permit and a panel upgrade that can run thousands of dollars and take weeks. That wiring friction, not the price of the stove, is what keeps gas in most existing homes.

San Francisco startup Impulse, founded by CEO Sam D'Amico, attacked the problem from inside the appliance. Its cooktop carries a 3kWh LFP battery and a 2kW inverter, sips from a standard 120V outlet, and still pushes 10kW of peak induction power across four 9-inch burners — boiling water in about 30 seconds, in the company's specification. When the grid fails, the stove keeps working off the battery.

The trick works because cooking is a bursty load. A meal needs kilowatts for minutes, then the kitchen sits idle for hours, so a 3kWh battery comfortably covers the peaks and refills between meals. The utility sees a flat 2kW draw instead of a 10kW spike; the house sees no construction project; the cook sees professional power.

Impulse listed the cooktop at $6,000 with shipping promised for 2024, and design firm BLOND's work on it was shortlisted at D&AD 2025 in Product Design. In July 2025 the company announced a partnership with ventilation-and-kitchen brand Zephyr to demo and sell the cooktop in Zephyr dealer showrooms across the US, and it is licensing its Impulse Core power platform to OEM partners — the stated ambition being appliances whose batteries add up to a fractionalized home backup system.

A 3kWh battery inside the stove replaces the panel upgrade

The blocker to induction in older homes is the missing 240V circuit, not the appliance; Impulse moved the electrical upgrade inside the product where a factory can install it once for everyone.

Cooking power is spiky — kilowatts for minutes, idle for hours — so a 3kWh battery covers the peaks while the wall supplies a steady 2kW the house never notices.

Plug-and-play removes the electrician, the permit and the lead time, the longest and least controllable steps in any electrification decision.

The battery doubles as outage backup and as the seed of distributed home storage, giving a premium appliance a second job and a second selling point.

Launching at the high end first — $6,000, design showrooms, Zephyr's dealer network — matches how a new component category gets down its cost curve.

When a category is blocked by infrastructure, internalize the peak: a battery turns spiky demand into a trickle any system can supply, and the buffer becomes a second product for free.

The Verge covered the $6,000 pre-order in June 2024 with shipping promised that year. In July 2025 Impulse and Zephyr announced the cooktop would be demonstrated and sold in Zephyr dealer showrooms nationwide — the first battery-integrated cooktop shown on US retail floors. Impulse is expanding the same battery-plus-inverter stack to other appliances through OEM partners under the Impulse Core brand, pitching homes where backup storage is bought one appliance at a time. D&AD shortlisted the product for its 2025 awards in Product Design.