And that’s if we assume 100% energy efficiency 
naw he probably used one of the many formula out there for boiling a pot of water regardless of external forces… scientists like fluids -alot-
GiggleGrassGatherer is correct; that was the minimum input energy to convert 0.25L of liquid water at room temperature to a cloud of steam, assuming no thermal losses during the process and 100% efficiency. Admittedly, electric resistance heaters are pretty efficient because it’s easy to run a current through a resistor and produce waste heat, but the key take-away is that CDDA underestimates battery costs for cooking by a factor of 50x to 100x.
This may get fixed soon; it turns out to be a relative small JSON fix, though with large follow-up effects when everyone moves to charcoal smokers and campfires for cooking.
Although I’m pretty sure that what you actually do when you craft ‘clean water’ is bring it to a boil then simmer for a bit. If you reduce it entirely to vapour then you have nothing left to drink! 
That ‘clean water’ is safe from (pre apocalypse) bacteria, parasites and viruses (well, with a few possible exceptions) but is not safe from various toxins and radiation.
If you full-on distil water (boil to vapour and condense) you eliminate many more contaminants but it obviously takes longer and needs more equipment and energy.
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Hotplates should be running on >= medium storage batteries, anyway. They should be more or less for cooking inside an electric vehicle.
Even if this were fixed, I would not move to charcoal or fire. The abundance of EVs in game means that there is an abundance of solar panels, and thus plenty of energy for cooking.
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Bringing water to a boil and letting it simmer is 250 * 80 * 4.184 / 1000 or about 84 battery charges to bring the water to 100 C, plus sufficient energy to keep it there while simmering. I don’t feel like calculating the energy loss at boiling, but it’s substantial, so call it 100-150 battery charges in total.
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When I was designing the kitchen in my IRL Tiny Home I seem to remember that an electric stove was no go. 240 ah of 12v batteries, 600 watts of solar panels, charging off the alternator on the tow vehicle and still would run down.
Chemical energy is the way to go IRL, so propane stove, heater and oven.
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Sounds about right. Hotplates should be mounted inside a vehicle and really drain the batteries. Renewable cooking at a great price.
I haven’t found any propane/cooking gas containers in houses so far, is this uncommon to find in New England?
Generally, in America, if a house has natural gas/propane appliances, the natural gas/propane is supplied from a centralized utility station. You have to be pretty far off the grid to need your own gas tank.
Though that’s not 100% true; stand-alone barbeques are sometimes propaned powered for faster and more controlled cooking, and those usually take stand-alone propane tanks. Someone could add those in a PR.
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The ‘trailer park’ areas would probably be a good place to find propane / butane stoves and tanks, IMO.
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That would also make trailer parks a bit more interesting as targets for looting; IIRC generally they are either annoyances or dangers for new players, with the concentration of Zs and dogs
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