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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

That's only a single ampre at standard European mains voltage. It's still a lot of power for those tiny connectors and insulation, but an order of magnitude insufficient for those appliances.

I bet that cable gets plenty hot at 200+ watts.

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A full sized European electric kettle is about 2000 watts, but if you limit capacity to a single cup you can get acceptable performance on 200 watt. A USB-C coffee pot or kettle scaled to 0.2 liters (7oz) could work. Would be a great option for travel

USB-C is limited to 48 VDC. Above about 50V, electrical safety codes apply.

You sure?

Those regulations go even higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra-low_voltage

The controlling standard is usually 62368, and the target is usually being a "Limited Power Source", which is 60V or less, and 100 VA max.

Yes, 240 watts is 5 ampres at that voltage - that's why I suspected that the cables get hot. I'm even surprised that a cable so thin is sufficiently insulated for 48 volts. I've seen 24 volt truck wiring arc out of dirty connectors.

You need a e-marked cable to get to 5A with any PD voltage, as a random crappy cable could get dangerously hot indeed. The limit is 3A and 20-21V otherwise.

Toasters are frequently only ~750W. That isn't an order of magnitude away from the capabilities of current USB-C.

I doubt they'll ever increase the voltage beyond the current 48V (I was actually shocked that they didn't stop at 24V) so toasters are forever away. But not an order of magnitude away!

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