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Comment by jahnu | Hacker News Reader

Well put. I was even surprised that most US homes don't have an electric kettle for boiling water but put a 'dumb' kettle on a stove!

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We in the USA can't get as much power out of a wall, so boiling water with an electric kettle takes twice as long as in the UK/europe (same amp breakers, with half the volts (115 vs 230), means half the watts.

A typical electric kettle puts a heating coil right into the water, and is better insulated against the escape of heat from its jacket.

Thankfully this is false. This would be incredibly dangerous and unreliable. The general design is a heating coil with an insulator that is then then jacketed in a steel or iron sheath.

When the element on my neighbors electric stove failed, the heating coil found its way through the insulator and the steel jacket. The electric current bored a hole through the aluminum pot she was using.

The entire insulated assembly consisting of a heating wire embedded in casing is commonly called a "heating coil".

I didn't say anything about a bare, uninsulated electric coil being immersed in water.

The point is that this assembly is immersed in water; all the heat which escapes from it goes into the water.

This is not true of a stove top heating.

I have an electric kettle plugged in to a standard US 110 socket, and it boils a few cups of water very quickly - about 2 minutes from the tap to boiling. Plus, the kettle has an automatic shut-off and I can hold the handle with my bare hands after it's done. Way better than the microwave or a stove-top kettle.

I think electric kettles are pretty common in the US among tea drinkers, but houses where everyone drinks coffee won't typically have one. Since most of the US prefers coffee, you don't get a lot of electric kettles.

Whoa I had no idea. I'd just assumed amperage would be higher in the USA, and that my kettle was crap.

Yup. This. I have a kettle. Boiling water for tea in 2-3 minutes. But if I run it and the microwave at the same time it trips my 20 amp breaker. :(

?? You can buy a $14 kettle that will boil water in about an minute and a half and works on 120. very easy , very common, people in the U.S. I don't think drink that much tea or you know, habits of culture, they don't consider it as something to have on their counter.

To be honest, most US homes don't really need one. We're not a tea country and most boiling of water is done in a pot to cook with. It's changing, and I personally love the things (Alton Brown suggests cooking hard boiled eggs in them), but my parents don't even own a kettle I think...

Fair enough :)

Or, more accurately, most US homes do have one -- it's in the coffee maker :-)

I have used a coffee maker just to make hot water. In a hotel room. :)

We own a kettle here in California, for tea and press coffee. In the morning, they are quick and work well. Only problems are arguments over too little or too much water.

Despite a nice gas stove, the electric kettle is quicker to use. It also has some "brains" in that it shuts down after awhile if not turned off (say 3-5 minutes at desired temp).

I don't know how many times I've had things cooking on the stove and forgot about them due to work, etc.

The main use of my electric kettle is parallel processing for my cooking water. I put one fourth of the cooking water into the pot and turn on the stove, then I put the other three quarters of the water into my electric kettle and turn that on as well. The kettle is usually done right before pot and then I pour all the water from the kettle into the pot. This greatly reduced the time to get boiling water for cooking.

Considering how peak usage for electricity in the UK is the time every house in the country "puts the kettle on" while watching soap operas, I wouldn't personally champion them as very energy-efficient -- especially since a lot of that boiled water is invariably wasted rather than turned into tea.

I don't know much about science, but there must be a reason the cheapest way to warm the average house is gas-powered boilers.

I don't see what that has to do with efficiency though. Granted gas is probably easier to modulate for spiky usage—I've seen the same BBC documentary that I suspect you have, with the quip about France having to donate some capacity to satisfy the post-EastEnders surge—but that doesn't really tell us anything about efficiency per se.

Having used both kettle technologies, my gut feeling is that heating a traditional kettle on gas just wastes a lot of the heat into the air by forcing the heat to penetrate an intermediary layer, whereas an electric kettle is insulated and puts heat directly into the water. This isn't a problem if you are boiling water to heat radiators because the lost heat is still helping heat the house. In that case you are saving the losses of converting heat to electricity (at the power plant) and then back to heat (in an electric heater).

a lot of that boiled water is invariably wasted rather than turned into tea

Only if you've overfilled the kettle. They consume 3kW, but only for a short time. David MacKay FRS investigated the gas vs. electric question in detail: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/hotwater/

Fun additional fact: British tanks come with electric kettles enabling the crew to make tea in combat situations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_vessel

I think the hot water is for MREs...

My wife and I received an electric kettle as a wedding gift and it's pretty amazing how fast it brings water to a boil. But, she may end up taking it to her office at work as she has no stove there whereas we have a really nice gas stove at home. I have not run the calculation as to if the electricity or the gas costs more to bring a 1/4 kettle of water to a near boil. But to be honest, most of our hot water drinks are coffee so the 12 cup drip coffee maker or even the Mr. Coffee espresso maker, both of which are electric get used far more.

Here (in the Netherlands) I see more and more kitchens with built-in instant hot water dispensers (like a Quooker[1]) instead. It's been a long time since I've seen anyone use a 'dumb' kettle.

[1]: http://www.quooker.co.uk/enuk

Quookers are fantastic, but they're still hugely expensive - hundreds of Euro - compared to a kettle which can be picked up for a tenner

> hundreds of Euro

Definitely! Starts a little under ±1000.

What I did find interesting is that it's not actually environmentally unfriendly, because the hot energy is stored in a very well insulated manner, and because it's near 100% efficient in the amount of water heated/used (whereas in a regular kettle you tend to overboil and boil too much water, and in an electric kettle there's often even a minimum fill that's larger than the needed water).

At least that's the story I've been reading on unaffiliated websites.

Haha you must hang with the right crowd, I've literally never seen one of 'm in the Netherlands (except when my gf was babysitting in a fancy place and I came over to hang out a few years back).

Most Americans don't use either kind of kettle.

My parents always used a kettle on the stove to heat the water to make ice tea. Bring it to a boil and then pour into a pitcher with two big tea bags. Sometimes as a kid I would do that using the microwave instead of the stove, but to the same effect.

Then what do they use? How do they make tea and coffee?

Especially given that most US homes have a microwave oven which heats water better than either.

Microwaved water makes tea taste flat and gives a weird aftertaste.

Probably aeration difference?

If I had FU money I'd set up a rapid double blind testing site to check claims like this.

...or you could have a couple friends come over and check it on your own. The difference is not subtle.

It's probably the container. Nuke up some water and before using it, pour it into the same kettle where it would be heated by other means; see if it still tastes different.

I microwave my water for coffee and tea in a glass french press container which has had enough use that it doesn't let the water superheat... this is important to prevent aftertaste (superheated water burns the tea).

'better' according to what? A quick DDG search finds examples that rate an electric kettle as faster and more energy efficient than a microwave e.g. http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/ask-pablo-electri...

edit: searched using duckduckgo, not google

Not if you have to heat 1 l in the kettle, if all you wanted was 250 ml.

For a large quantity, the kettle wins. You could boil 4 l of water in a microwave oven, but it would take long. Over that time, a lot of heat would escape.

How can my 900 W microwave heat water quicker than my 2400 W electric kettle?

All energy into the water. Instead of most into the kettle, table, air etc.

I'm not sure if you know how electric kettles work, but the heating element is always right under or even in the water. Most kettles are also insulated quite well, there's not a lot of energy lost.

For one thing, you can heat the exact quantity you actually need, instead of having to meet the kettle's minimum fill requirement.

900W is weak for a microwave oven. You can get 1200W or more.

Doing some googling, it seems that around 1600W is still home use; 1800W and up is "commercial".

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