As the title says, I managed to short circuit 3 induction hobs with my brand new Demeyere 28cm saucepan in a day... It's a great piece of cookware and I honestly don't want to return it and rather make it work somehow but I still really have no idea what is going on, so please let me state my case:
I have a somewhat commercial kitchen setup with (what I learned thanks to the excellent post "High level induction stove, cookware and cooking guide. The good the bad and the ugly!") rather cheap portable induction stoves.
Nothing fancy just the following lineup:
1x Metro 3,5KW "commercial" induction hob (no info here, just up to 28cm)
2x Metro 3,5KW "commercial" XL induction hob with a coil diameter of 22cm, allowing diameters from 12-32cm (https://www.metro.de/marktplatz/product/e8913b76-0e8f-47ab-a262-a91197481938)
2x MEDION® MD 15324 double induction household , 3,5KW in total, 2KW on the left, 1,5KW on the right stove (12-26cm diameter as per manual)
Electrical installation is rather new with every hob sitting at 3,5KW 16A on his own phase. Total circuit power is at least 10KW (CEE16A) and in some tanks even 20KW (CEE32A)
Up until now I never had any problems with induction at all and I usually use WMF perfect stainless steel 22cm pressure cookers on all stoves and on the XL ones even a chinese 32cm pressure cooker (aluminium alloy with some stainless steel) and occassionally a 28cm skeppshult cast iron frypan on all.
Now on my first day with the Demeyere everything went haywire from the start as I tried it first on the XL hob No. 1, after I finished with the 32cm pot. I turned it to about 2000 and the breaker tripped. Not only in the "tank" but even the main breaker in the building.
I was surprised, but nothing out of the ordinary I thought, put everything back in place, fired it up again and same thing happened again, but now the hob didn't turn on again and there was a spark at the power socket which even melted the plug a little.
At that time I was really surprised but didn't think it was the Demeyeres' fault, so I moved it to the other XL hob right next to it, fired it up again and everything started again with the breaker tripping to the main breaker (plug also fried and deformed) and at that time I called my electrician and he was quite astounded but reassured me that it has to be the appliances fault since basically it was not that much power drawn during that time and everything else was perfectly fine. (he hasn't had the time to check since, but wants to do it next week)
I bought both XL hobs about two years ago and thought that it might have been just poor quality and natural way of things for them to die on me at the same time, so I moved the Demeyere over to the Medion double hob (left side at about 1600), where I managed to the the bolognese sauce done for lunch and everything was well. We had lunch, the pan cooled down with the sauce inside, everything fine.
Now about 4 hours later, I wanted to give it some reheating on the stove and now the breaker trips and the hob also got fried.
At that point I realized that it has to be the saucepan since even the low watt Medion got fried at like 800W.
I tried googling some info about this phenomenon and found some posts on reddit stating the exact same problem of Demereye Atlantis killing hobs/stovetops and I would like to know the reason/remedy or just any information because my wife urges me to return the pan (still freshly bought, so I can still return it), give up on the whole matter and move on with life, never being able to own or rather operate with such a fine piece of cooking ware.
I didn't want to let go of it that fast and checked the hobs along with some help from ChatGPT and the result is the following:
Medion hob has a blown glas fuse, along with a fried IGBT. Rectifier should be fine as far as I can see. Spare parts are ordered and I will see if I can fix it myself at about 10 Euro for the parts. (Just a small side project to see if I am able to DIY fix it myself and to get a better understanding of the physics of induction, excuse to get a soldering iron and multimeter etc.) Replacing this one would set me back about 80 Euro, so I will try to see what I can do myself and let my electrician have a look at it before use
The XL commercial ones are going to be returned and replaced. No fuse was blown here (ceramic one) and since I return them, I didn't dig much deeper what the broken parts are, as I already have the new ones here.
So now I seriously do not know what to do next with the Demeyere saucepan as I do not want to give up but am afraid that it will continue breaking every other induction hob I have.
I also tried the Zwilling/Demeyere customers service hotline here in Germany and he told me that he never heard of such a case and that Demeyere is the best pan in the world :) Since I am still within 14 days after the purchase, he told me to contact the retailer where I bought it and after those 14 days it becomes Demeyeres' responsibility & warranty.
Does any one have some ideas what the cause might be and what I should do?
Should it be fine with the brand new ones or will I just kill them again? (Here I might have full warranty, so I could give it a go but I don't want to cause any unnecessary damage/hassle but I really want to know what is going on, how to fix/avoid it and if I can keep my pan or not.
TL;DR:
Brand new Demeyere Atlantis 7 28 cm pan repeatedly trips breakers and has now killed 3 induction hobs (including a low-power one). Other cookware works fine. Is this a known issue with highly efficient pans stressing weaker induction electronics, or am I missing something in my setup? Should I return the pan or expect this to happen again?