This seemed like a wild claim (2500 watts for a tea kettle!? As much as a microwave oven in full blast?) so I looked it up. Wow.
tl;dw -- kettles in the U.S. only take about 4+ minutes to boil a liter of water. So when you say "now" you really mean it.
- Amount of water
- Initial temperature of water
- Position of water container
They also prevent superheated water accidents.
Plus, when you reduce the heat the heat reduces almost immediately.
Nothing else compares with the speed it works that I've ever used before. Definitely worth the upgrade in time saved at the stove.
You can improve that by using less water, but I would still like to double the power.
Wh? It’s definitely less hassle, and maybe faster, to fill a cup/mug and stick that in the microwave
Than it is to fill a cup, pour that into the kettle, boil it, then pour it back in the cup. Or you have to put more water into the kettle than you need, because you can’t measure it accurateLet, and then it takes longer to boil
Doesn't your microwave heat a cup of water in about the same amount of time as a tea kettle? And most tea kettles are bigger than one cup.
Now, think about concentrating the same amount of energy to heat up your eyeball. Or worse, concentrated into a tiny point on your eyeball.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country#T...
You have 240 V at the panel, but you only run half for each common circuit.
Here in Singapore I think our pool pump uses three phase power, too. (Our plugs and outlets here in Singapore follow the British model.)
Continental Europe uses 16A radial circuits so the current rating is higher there.
EDIT: Of course, you can't run two kettles on one radial, but you can on one ring.
t = specific heat capacity of water * mass of water * degC deltaT / power
4.186 J/gC 1000g * 80C / 1800 J/s ~= 186 seconds
(I use mine mostly on the 90W or 180W settings, for defrosting.)
... but then i checked my eastern european kettle and guess what, it's ... 2.4 kW.
Almost all household appliances that heat (and specifically heat food or water) will operate at the limit of what your house can supply.
So that's about 1800 Watt in the US and about 3500 Watt in most of the rest of the world.
It's only natural that you see almost any (heating) appliance cluster around these numbers.
(I'm actually not quite sure where you would see 2500 Watt kettles. Perhaps some are deliberately neutered a bit, so that you don't blow a fuse in case you have anything else on that circuit?
Keep in mind that in the UK, but not in eg France or Germany, every plug also has its own fuse.)
Here in the UK, my home brew beer set up has a 3000w option - great for boiling 25 litres of water/wort - that said it came with a EU plug with some sort of 'fancy' UK plug convertor. After about 4 years the plug started to get so hot that it melted a socket or two - I found that inside the convertor the connection between the EU plug and the UK was really thin, which was causing it to heat up.
I cut off the end of the cable and rewired it to a heavy duty UK plug - it has been perfect since then - and no longer over heats.
Yes, but you still see electric space heaters. And they essentially all also have the same wattage: the limit of what they can get.
South african plugs are rated 16A @240V. Thats a safe 3.5kW at each and every plug socket in the house.
Brazil is also an exception. The standard socket is only 10A (with a 20A alternative for things like air conditioners), and the voltages vary depending on the city (and the building, and location within the building); you might have 110V, 115V, 127V, 220V, 230V, and perhaps others I have missed (I went in more detail about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40385851). I live in a 127V/220V area, so my single-phase sockets are 10A @ 127V, for a total of only 1.3kW each.
But mixing 100s of volts with 200s of volts sounds mad. I presume you had the special plug for your 200 range outlets? Does Brazil also have split phase AC like the US?
The same type of socket is used for "110V" (usually 127V) and "220V", sometimes in the same building, sometimes right next to each other. The "220V" socket might be colored red, or might have a sticker saying "220V" glued next to it, but don't count on it. The only difference is between the 10A and the 20A, the pins on the 20A plug are slightly thicker and don't fit in the 10A socket (the opposite works fine).
But at least, it's better than a couple of decades ago: on top of all that, back then we didn't even have a plug and socket standard. It was a mix of several types, including a "universal" socket which looked like the common USA socket but could also accept plugs with round pins, and all of them (including the USA standard sockets) could be used for both "110V" and "220V". The new plug and socket standard is great; it's better than the USA standard, since a partially pushed plug won't expose live pins (and it's also slightly smaller, allowing for denser power strips). It's unfortunate that they didn't also modify the European standard they used as a base to add keying for the different voltages (while allowing a universal plug for things which can work on both voltages), but I understand that trying to do too much could make it politically unfeasible to mandate the new standard.
> Does Brazil also have split phase AC like the US?
It's more common to have three-phase AC (that is, between phase and neutral is 127V and between a pair of phases is 220V), but we also have some places with split phase (for instance, 110V between phase and neutral and 220V between a pair of phases).
Over here in NZ we get pretty similar ratings on the same style heaters, but the large room ones are 2400kW because we can get that from any socket.
Also with my hobby - sewing. A lot of people in North America talk about forgetting they left the iron on, but I switch it on and off every time because it heats up in 30 seconds - less if it’s been on recently.
That's eg common for electric stoves in your kitchen.