He mentions induction 'hot plates' towards the end, and says that they're limited to the same 1800W and 120V as kettles, but there are "commercial" portable induction stoves that are 220V and can go up to 3500 and 5000W; e.g.:
In the US. In the UK 2200W induction plates are readily available with a standard plug for ~£40, or if you spend a little more you can go to 3kW - [0] which is about the limit of most domestic circuits but is hotter than most gas hobs.
If you _really_ want more than that you can go a little mental and use one with an integrated battery which can push out 10 kW [1]
This begs the question, and I've genuinely thought this before, of why we don't just strap a battery to a kettle and end this silly debate. If it takes 5 minutes to boil a cup of water in a 1000 watt kettle, that's somewhere around 80Wh... I guess it would be kind of expensive, but couldn't you make a pretty fast kettle with some number of high discharge battery cells?
(Well honestly, I guess the real answer is outside of Internet debates most people probably just don't consider 5 minutes to boil a cup of water to be a problem.)
It would turn an inert device that costs a couple bucks to manufacture and has affectively no usage limit into a bomb that costs a couple hundred bucks (due to lack of economy of scale) and is limited by the battery's rated number of cycles. The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.
If people are willing to rewire their homes for kettles, I guess a couple hundred bucks isn't that bad.
> limited by the battery's rated number of cycles
Obviously the battery should be replaceable. (It should be in most electronics, really...)
> The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.
That doesn't seem like a particularly tricky problem to me. The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat. If you were really worried it'd be possible to put the battery on a separate power brick instead probably.
...
And I guess I could've solved my own problem by googling it. There are tons of battery kettles on the market, including a 1500W one by Cuisinart and a 2200W (apparently?) unit by Makita. The latter is predictably expensive but the Cuisinart is available for around $100 where I live, which is definitely pricey but seems plausible.
The only one I found that was truly battery-powered was the Makita [0]. The $99 Cuisinart I found seems to be a standard electric kettle. Lots of kettles describe themselves as cordless but that does not mean battery-powered; it just means the kettle itself can be removed from a corded base.
I also found a ton of AI-generated link spam pages purporting to be about battery-powered kettles that are all clearly not battery-powered (e.g. [1]). Some of these are 12v powered, but they still contain no batteries. Apparently the adjective cordless confuses AI just like it does people.
Side note: Boiling water takes a lot of energy. You need a big battery; not just a couple of AAs. Any truly battery-powered kettle is going to require a battery at least as big as one for a contractor-grade power tool, and that battery is going to deplete after roughly one boiled pot.
> Obviously the battery should be replaceable. (It should be in most electronics, really...)
This is super wasteful when we can just hook up a heating element to an insulated tank and keep it hot like Quooker [0] does. Assuming the 3L tank, that would mean probably 20 minutes to heat the tank if it's entirely emptied for the US, but that's how long it would take to boil that water with an electric kettle _anyway_. If you want 5l of water for cooking, you cna use your 3L tank and fill it up with the "slightly lukewarm water that keeps coming through the tap", and then put it on the hob _anyway_. In the best case you're boiling 2L of water instead of 5 anyway.
> That doesn't seem like a particularly tricky problem to me. The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat. If you were really worried it'd be possible to put the battery on a separate power brick instead probably.
Dunno what kettle you're using but no kettle I've ever used has been insulated. They're either plastic, or stainless steel. They do usually have a lid, which helps.
It doesn't have to be insulated like an insulated water bottle or anything, plastic is good enough for this. I have a cheap 120V kettle, nothing special, probably mostly plastic but with some superficial bits of stainless steel. After bringing a cup of water to a boil you can safely touch the base and anywhere on the kettle itself; there's not even an obvious sign of warmth anywhere except for the lid. If you don't believe me, I do have a thermal camera, but I assume this can be reproduced with most kettles, since it's not like mine is anything special.
Also: a hot water tank is just another type of battery. If it's really well insulated, it might work pretty good, but the self-discharge rate is probably still a lot higher than a lithium ion battery. If you aren't using boiling water every day this seems like it would be very wasteful.
I don't see anything terribly wasteful about the concept of putting batteries in a few more things. They're very recyclable, and already extremely abundant. It's not necessary, but neither is pushing several kW through a kettle just to get water to boil a bit faster. So really, that might be worth interrogating first...
> It doesn't have to be insulated like an insulated water bottle or anything, plastic is good enough for this.
Yeah I agree, but I was responding to the point of:
> The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat
Which isn't true at all. They make a token effort.
> Also: a hot water tank is just another type of battery.
You're technically correct, the worst kind of correct.
> don't see anything terribly wasteful about the concept of putting batteries in a few more things. They're very recyclable, and already extremely abundant. It's not necessary, but neither is pushing several kW through a kettle just to get water to boil a bit faster. So really, that might be worth interrogating first...
It takes ~320 kJ of energy to bring a litre of water from room temp to boiling, no matter what way you spin it. The difference between pushing 1500w or 3kW into the hot plate is "how quickly do you get to boiling", and has basically no bearing on the total amount of energy used to boil the water. Running a 1500w kettle for twice as long will use the same amount of energy, from the same source.
Using consumable li-ion/alkaline batteries to supplement that energy is _terribly_ wasteful - we've been through the "reduce reuse recycle" loop already with waste, lets not do the same thing with rare earth metals to avoid running a single cable to household appliances.
> Which isn't true at all. They make a token effort.
Look, the point was whether or not it would be okay to put batteries on it, not whether it would keep a drink warm for 12 hours. If the base is cool to the touch, I think it will be completely fine for batteries to be near it. If anything, making sure they're safe from shorting is probably a bigger concern.
> You're technically correct, the worst kind of correct.
The point wasn't to be technically correct, it's to point out that you can compare the properties of the two types of batteries like-for-like and realize that for many people interested in a faster kettle the boiling water tank idea might not be great. In America most homes have a water heater and it has to contend with the same sort of problem, only we use hot water multiple times a day every day (and at least in the Midwest, use LNG for heating it a lot of the time, which makes it economical if not particularly environmentally friendly.)
> It takes ~320 kJ of energy to bring a litre of water from room temp to boiling, no matter what way you spin it. The difference between pushing 1500w or 3kW into the hot plate is "how quickly do you get to boiling", and has basically no bearing on the total amount of energy used to boil the water. Running a 1500w kettle for twice as long will use the same amount of energy, from the same source.
Well duh. My very first post in this thread is estimating how much energy is required for a typical kettle to bring a U.S. cup of water to a boil. (Though obviously in reality you have to account for losses.)
My point here is that (a relatively small niche of) people are already doing crazy things like rewiring their houses (in America) to push pretty absurd power into kettles just boil water slightly faster, a time save that literally only even matters if you sit there and wait idly while the water heats up. The problem I have isn't that higher wattage kettles are somehow bad, it's that all of this time, effort and money for a time save measured in minutes is crazy. And it's the same for strapping batteries to a kettle or for keeping a water tank of boiling water too. I wouldn't bother with any of them, and don't. (But, as I opened this thread with, seeing how crazy people get over this, I do remain surprised at the relatively few battery kettles on the market.)
> Using consumable li-ion/alkaline batteries to supplement that energy is _terribly_ wasteful - we've been through the "reduce reuse recycle" loop already with waste, lets not do the same thing with rare earth metals to avoid running a single cable to household appliances.
I just counted and the room I'm currently standing in has 8 separate high capacity lithium ion batteries. We put batteries in our power tools, laptops, vacuum cleaners, tooth brushes, game controllers, wireless computer peripherals, air compressors, UPS units, the phone someone is currently reading this comment on, air dusters, garden lighting and certainly much more. Almost everything with electronics in it has batteries for something (if you inlcude smaller ones like clock batteries), and more often than ever, high capacity ones no less.
A battery operated kettle will forever be an expensive niche product, and it wouldn't even use that much battery in the first place. The environmental impact of all of those batteries would struggle to get to the level of 100 electric vehicles, and yet we are selling over 10 million of those per year.
Of all of the contrived and silly arguments, this is by far the most contrived and silliest of all of them.
I'm in the midst of a kitchen remodel (in 120V land).
I decided to pull an extra 240V line to the countertop explicitly for a tea kettle, which I have not purchased yet but seem to be available from Amazon UK for ~2x the price of an ordinary US-market kettle.
The most disappointing thing so far is the short list of kettle options that ship from the UK to the US.
Also not sure if I should get a UK receptacle (this would probably offend the bldg inspector, so I might swap post-inspection), or just rewire the kettle itself with a standard US (240V) plug.
FWIW, the extra wire + breaker cost was about $100. I expect to pay another $30 or so for the receptacle or appliance wire, and a bit over $100 for the kettle (and its replacements every few years). Not the least expensive option, but not too bad.
Personally I would just wire some NEMA 240V outlet and then have a separate adapter with a pigtail of that receptacle type and a workbox with the UK receptacle. It's a little unwieldy, but it puts the questionable hackery outside the realm of the building inspection at least.
Whether it's actually safe I though, that I am curious. Obviously the kettle can get the 240V potential it expects, but the neutral is center tapped out of the split phase transformer, right? Not sure how people wire this. (Doesn't the neutral wind up having to be one of the hots instead?)
Hmm, yeah! I hadn't thought much about the differences between UK and US 240VAC service.
In the US, it's 240V 60Hz, split-phase with center-tapped neutral, and an independent ground wire.
In the UK, it's 240V 50Hz, single-phase with independent neutral and ground.
Frequency difference should be within design tolerance. and if my EE memory serves, the phase difference should be acceptable -- just measured from a different zero reference point. The neutral from the wall would be unused, and the ground would be wired as usual.
I'll think this through thoroughly though, I was definitely glossing over those details, so thank you!
Basically my concern is, ordinarily the potential from neutral to ground would be roughly 0V with some slack. In this case, though, the potential from neutral to ground would necessarily be 120V. I have no idea what the implications of that may be, but it seems important.
I think this is right, but I'm not 100%. The kettle should get what it needs, but I'm less certain whether a GFCI or ArcFCI breaker would have opinions that must be accounted for. I'll check with someone more qualified than myself to be sure!
Yes I understand. But what I'm saying is, normally neutral and ground would have roughly 0V potential, but in this case the UK neutral and UK ground will have 120V potential between them, because the US 120V second phase will have 120V potential to ground. (It bears noting that I am just a random guy and not any kind of expert. No formal education or credentials relating to electricity whatsoever.)
I think you're thinking about it on the kettle side, and I was thinking on the breaker side.
I think the kettle side would not care. It may be a ground fault in UK wires, but the kettle has no reason to detect it, and nothing sensitive enough inside to care. If I'm wrong, I'd expect to know shortly after starting the very first use. :)
> Most UK kettles are not 3000W, and most of the ones that are, are junk. Y
They may not be 3 kW, but even the most basic of them are 2200W [0], and 3000W ones are readily available are not much more expensive [1]. They're also not really junk - they're a lump of plastic, a hot plate and a thermistor - the difference between a £8 one and a £80 one is almost all aesthetics.
I watched the video already before this HN thread, being a Technology Connections subscriber, but I genuinely forgot or missed that it discussed that aspect. I'm not surprised, though.
No need to rewire anything - just get a universal plug adapter for NEMA 6-15P (or whatever your kitchen outlet is going to be) from Amazon, plug it onto the UK plug of your kettle, and Bob’s your uncle. (The building inspector doesn’t need to even see your kettle and plug.)
The molded, sealed plug of a UK kettle would fare much better in a wet kitchen environment than an aftermarket plug you'd manually install (moisture can get inside and corrode the terminals and connections).
I agree. If I replace the wire, I'd get an assembly with the correct US molded plug (NEMA 14-30?), and perform the wire replacement inside the kettle itself. Your reason is good, but I'd do it that way for the aesthetics alone. :)
It's probably just the price of batteries. You can definitely do this and you'd need like 8 18650 batteries, which today you can get on amazon for $30 USD. A decade ago it might have cost $200-$300.
Given that premium kettles already sell for about $100, there's definitely room for an ultra premium kettle that boils water laughably fast for $150.
I believe there master plan foresees a future where batteries are more integrated with a house for decentralized grid storage. But the additional consumer advantage is better hardware - i.e cooking time.
That seems a terrible waste of batteries to me. A boiling water tap seems like a better idea to me - electric heater with a pressurised insulated vessel that just dispenses from your tap.
Sure, but over in 230V-land 3500W hot plates are completely standard, and can plug into any regular wall socket. Same with microwaves and hot-air ovens: just put it anywhere on your kitchen countertop and plug it into the nearest socket.
We do also have a "kitchen plug" for high-powered appliances. Those go up to 7.3kW in their regular dual-single-phase 16A version, 11kW when wired with three phases (quite common in households these days), or even 17kW with the (understandably) rarely-used 25A plug variant with three-phase wiring.
And that's not even commercial equipment, just what you'd pick up at your local Best Buy equivalent. The commercial stuff uses CeeForm, which is a three-phase 16A/32A/63A/125A plug. Or it's getting hard-wired.
Not OP but - I can't answer the specific regs, but 16A/240V is absolutely bog standard for the UK and every high street store stocks ovens that will draw this down. They need to be on their own circuit, e.g. this [0].
I've never seen a single oven pull more than this, but devices like [1] are fairly common where you have two independent ovens in one, and it can pull 21A - this would necessitate the 25A supply.
It's a Chinese reseller, with some quality control maybe but surely some great service attached to it. But you'll find 90% without vevor Logo on AliExpress.
Still big fan and regular customer, very surprised to see they have a .ca too and likely more.
Great video, but coincidentally two weeks too late for me:
I never knew about the boil auto-shut-off mechanism and the overheat/"boil-dry" protection circuit being two different things in some kettles. In those, pouring out the entire water before the auto-off had a chance to kick in can cause a situation where the kettle stays on (due to not enough steam being present to trip it), but the boil-dry protection circuit continuously engages and disengages until somebody notices or the thing self-destroys – ours did the latter.
Now we have one with a switch at the bottom, and I'm hoping that due to that construction, the boil-dry protection will also disengage the switch if needed. (It also helps that the switch automatically disengages when lifting the kettle off its base.)
I have a kettle with 5°-settable temperature targets that has transformed my tea drinking.
It also has a function to hold temperature for up to 30 minutes, and because it has actual logic going on inside, when you lift it off the base it knows this and won't turn back on when you put it back.
I have an electric water boiler like that also. I have to be very mindful to press a button to turn it off if i return it empty to the induction plate/holder otherwise it starts clicking and beeping and freaking out.
I am a farmer with giant water pumps and center pivots that run on 3 phase 480 volt power. One of my pumps has 85 horsepower. I wonder if I could wire up some sort of custom made tea kettle and get water to boil in five seconds?
You could run (10) of these 9kW 480V three-phase immersion heaters [0] in place of your 85 HP motor, assuming ~110A FLA @ 480V = 91.5kW. The 9kW immersion heaters are 10.8A each at 480V three-phase (would be 75A if it was 120V single-phase!)
Just make sure you have somewhere for the steam to go, it takes up a bit more room than water ;)
Is your three-phase a corner-grounded delta service? I’ve never seen one in the wild but I hear they’re used for three-phase ag service drops that are strictly used to run motors. A and C are tapped normally on the secondary but the B phase is bonded to ground and also a line conductor, conductor color is white for B phase instead of orange.
Well, that's about what happens in Sauna with electric stove.
In Finland we do it every day and have done decades already.
Those who may not know electric stoves have been about fifty years common use at least in urban environments. Stoves have anything from three, one in each of three phase current used heating elements (resistor coils) 400V 6-8 kW power draw commonly in small house stoves and 2-3 times that swimming baths saunas stoves.
While sitting topmost sauna benches bathing, we throw fresh water from bucket with a sauna laddle (saunakauha) water to stove(s) anything from small drippings to a pint with trying to little spread it out. This is to get steam and make it pleasant relaxing 'löyly' as we call it.
The stove is usually heated about an hour or so before starting bathing to get temperature somewhere 70°-100°C (158-212°F).
It's not advisable to have stove showing those red hot glowing elements peeking out behind stones, but it does happen if stones were not laid properly. But even if water gets directly to elements those will not break or get any damage as they are made intentionally to resist that.
So boiling water practically immediately does happen, it's not particularly dangerous when applied in circumstances where equipment is made to withstand that is nothing miraculous. And that really happens millions of times each day in Finland and some other places where that kind of sauna culture is practised both at people private homes and also public swimming baths saunas alike.
I will be observing it next time about in 14 hours from this writing as I'm going swimming as usual tomorrow morning at 6:00 am. when pool opens early tomorrow, and then likewise twice more (Wed, Fri). Also once more (Thu) evening sauna reservation slot i've got this flat I live.
There is a quite good english page about Finish sauna in Wikipedia, but to get a glimpse what modern sauna and stoves look Harvia a long time stove manufacturer web pages you get some sense what I'm writing about.
It’s a good point but there might be a pretty big difference in force because the ladled pint of water is not contained on any axis. A pint of water in a cup, with up as the only exit, subjected to the full current of a 3 phase 480v circuit is probably going to generate a good size jet of steam straight up.
Yeah, that's true that water thrown to a stove isn't much contained anything but that bathing room. Some of water will of course flow between stones bit deeper, but there is plenty of room to expand when it boils to steam.
Some firm hissing, minor clanking noise from stones is normal and even bit sharper noise when a stone cracks is what water use on stove causes when stones get old and are used lot. Stove should be cleaned periodically when it's cold depending on how much it's been used and there is need to replace stones or even all of them if it's been long time and there is some sand accumulation stove bottom grill or plate, whatever it has to hold stones falling trough. Family houses cleaning perhaps 1/yr and public saunas open 6 am to 8 pm 300 plus days a year, they will do stove maintenance every or every other month.
And yes, getting good amount of steam of course is what's been whole goal in this kind of sauna use and what we prefer. Some other places where they have begun to call it sauna too, they may not even allow to use water nothing but as drinking water and usually they don't warm up that 'sauna' as hot as we tend to do or if they do it's more like Turkish bath type then.
3-phase electeode Boiler comes to mind.
Just have it as a pass-through with a grounded shield at the end to keep you from accidentally touching dangerous voltage.
It breaks down into its individual components which escape as gases. That alone shouldn't make the remaining water toxic, assuming a perfect reaction. But I guess the reaction isn't perfect due to things like impurities, the metals used as electrodes and so on?
I'm sure there was a period where one couldn't find a 3kW kettle in the UK on power efficiency grounds, one was supposed to run a 2kW one instead to save the planet. But now when I search I find 3kW models again. So either that was a nightmare of some sort or sanity has prevailed.
Chatgpt thinks this was threatened in 2010 then postponed in 2016 then cancelled, which vaguely aligns with my timeline of interest in tea.
I highly doubt that. Electric kettles are just about 100% efficient, and the only difference between a 3kW kettle and a 2kW one is how long it'll take to boil. The total energy consumed will be more-or-less the same.
Are you perhaps conflating it with the EU regulations on vacuum cleaners going in around 2017? As with all EU regulations, this of course resulted in a decent bunch of EU-bashing in UK media by the usual suspects - despite less-power-hungry vacuum cleaners being just as effective as the more power-hungry ones, and power consumption being inflated by manufacturers to market their vacuums, as plenty of people believed that "bigger number = more suck = more better".
UK power grid has the Eastenders effect. Where the ending credits of the Eastenders soap signals a large increase in power draw from the grid as people will put on the tea kettle at the end of the show. The grid operators have to dispatch enough power to cover for this.
While the amount of energy used to boil water at 2kW is not significantly different from 3kW (2kW has a tiny amount of more atmospheric losses I think), there is a difference for the impact on the grid. Same energy but more power generating and transmission line capacity needed.
Here's a video showing an engineer at the national grid bringing hydro-electric plants online at the closing credits of a popular soap opera in anticipation of the millions of kettle that are about to be switched on!
But the more powerful kettle should be slightly more efficient[0] because there is less time for heat to escape from the kettle while the water is being heated.
[0] Energy efficiency at boiling the water. A kettle is always 100% effective at making heat.
You could use vacuum like in a vacuum flask. In fact to my surprise the product seems to already exists although its selling point is how long it holds water hot after boiling and not its efficiency.
A larger heating element is very slightly more efficient due to less heat escaping as the liquid is heated more quickly. Resistive electric heating is always 100% efficient no matter the size of the heating element.
Keep in mind that heat is constantly being transferred between things that are different temperatures, the faster something reaches the set point temperature, the less time there is to lose heat.
There was no such thing in the UK. ChatGPT is trained to produce text that fulfills the user's expectations. If you put a prejudiced prompt in, expect a corresponding result.
People are downvoting you because your story seems crazy, but you’re right (and wrong).
In the early 2010s there were reports that the EU was set to ban 3kW kettles in the anti-EU tabloid press.
The ‘plans’ were discussions, were general (about ‘high energy appliances’, not specifically kettles), and never got beyond the initial discussion stage - according to the same press because of fears they would drive Britons to vote for Brexit, although I’m not sure I believe that. As other commenters say, unlike other appliances that could be made more efficient, kettles are almost 100% efficient already, so the power draw doesn’t really matter. I still have some faith the authorities looking into home appliance energy efficiency would know that.
He mentions induction 'hot plates' towards the end, and says that they're limited to the same 1800W and 120V as kettles, but there are "commercial" portable induction stoves that are 220V and can go up to 3500 and 5000W; e.g.:
* https://www.vevor.ca/induction-cooktop-c_10592/vevor-portabl...
* https://www.trueinduction.com/Commercial-Single-Induction-Co...
Just need a NEMA 6 plug (GFCI/AFCI per code as well probably):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#Nomenclature
In the US. In the UK 2200W induction plates are readily available with a standard plug for ~£40, or if you spend a little more you can go to 3kW - [0] which is about the limit of most domestic circuits but is hotter than most gas hobs.
If you _really_ want more than that you can go a little mental and use one with an integrated battery which can push out 10 kW [1]
[0] https://www.nisbets.co.uk/nisbets-essentials-single-zone-ind...
[1] https://www.impulselabs.com/
This begs the question, and I've genuinely thought this before, of why we don't just strap a battery to a kettle and end this silly debate. If it takes 5 minutes to boil a cup of water in a 1000 watt kettle, that's somewhere around 80Wh... I guess it would be kind of expensive, but couldn't you make a pretty fast kettle with some number of high discharge battery cells?
(Well honestly, I guess the real answer is outside of Internet debates most people probably just don't consider 5 minutes to boil a cup of water to be a problem.)
It would turn an inert device that costs a couple bucks to manufacture and has affectively no usage limit into a bomb that costs a couple hundred bucks (due to lack of economy of scale) and is limited by the battery's rated number of cycles. The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.
If people are willing to rewire their homes for kettles, I guess a couple hundred bucks isn't that bad.
> limited by the battery's rated number of cycles
Obviously the battery should be replaceable. (It should be in most electronics, really...)
> The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.
That doesn't seem like a particularly tricky problem to me. The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat. If you were really worried it'd be possible to put the battery on a separate power brick instead probably.
...
And I guess I could've solved my own problem by googling it. There are tons of battery kettles on the market, including a 1500W one by Cuisinart and a 2200W (apparently?) unit by Makita. The latter is predictably expensive but the Cuisinart is available for around $100 where I live, which is definitely pricey but seems plausible.
The only one I found that was truly battery-powered was the Makita [0]. The $99 Cuisinart I found seems to be a standard electric kettle. Lots of kettles describe themselves as cordless but that does not mean battery-powered; it just means the kettle itself can be removed from a corded base.
I also found a ton of AI-generated link spam pages purporting to be about battery-powered kettles that are all clearly not battery-powered (e.g. [1]). Some of these are 12v powered, but they still contain no batteries. Apparently the adjective cordless confuses AI just like it does people.
Side note: Boiling water takes a lot of energy. You need a big battery; not just a couple of AAs. Any truly battery-powered kettle is going to require a battery at least as big as one for a contractor-grade power tool, and that battery is going to deplete after roughly one boiled pot.
[0] https://www.acmetools.com/makita-40v-max-xgt-hot-water-kettl...
[1] https://activegearreviews.com/best-battery-powered-kettles/
> Obviously the battery should be replaceable. (It should be in most electronics, really...)
This is super wasteful when we can just hook up a heating element to an insulated tank and keep it hot like Quooker [0] does. Assuming the 3L tank, that would mean probably 20 minutes to heat the tank if it's entirely emptied for the US, but that's how long it would take to boil that water with an electric kettle _anyway_. If you want 5l of water for cooking, you cna use your 3L tank and fill it up with the "slightly lukewarm water that keeps coming through the tap", and then put it on the hob _anyway_. In the best case you're boiling 2L of water instead of 5 anyway.
> That doesn't seem like a particularly tricky problem to me. The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat. If you were really worried it'd be possible to put the battery on a separate power brick instead probably.
Dunno what kettle you're using but no kettle I've ever used has been insulated. They're either plastic, or stainless steel. They do usually have a lid, which helps.
[0] https://www.quooker.co.uk/tanks
It doesn't have to be insulated like an insulated water bottle or anything, plastic is good enough for this. I have a cheap 120V kettle, nothing special, probably mostly plastic but with some superficial bits of stainless steel. After bringing a cup of water to a boil you can safely touch the base and anywhere on the kettle itself; there's not even an obvious sign of warmth anywhere except for the lid. If you don't believe me, I do have a thermal camera, but I assume this can be reproduced with most kettles, since it's not like mine is anything special.
Also: a hot water tank is just another type of battery. If it's really well insulated, it might work pretty good, but the self-discharge rate is probably still a lot higher than a lithium ion battery. If you aren't using boiling water every day this seems like it would be very wasteful.
I don't see anything terribly wasteful about the concept of putting batteries in a few more things. They're very recyclable, and already extremely abundant. It's not necessary, but neither is pushing several kW through a kettle just to get water to boil a bit faster. So really, that might be worth interrogating first...
> It doesn't have to be insulated like an insulated water bottle or anything, plastic is good enough for this.
Yeah I agree, but I was responding to the point of: > The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat
Which isn't true at all. They make a token effort.
> Also: a hot water tank is just another type of battery.
You're technically correct, the worst kind of correct.
> don't see anything terribly wasteful about the concept of putting batteries in a few more things. They're very recyclable, and already extremely abundant. It's not necessary, but neither is pushing several kW through a kettle just to get water to boil a bit faster. So really, that might be worth interrogating first...
It takes ~320 kJ of energy to bring a litre of water from room temp to boiling, no matter what way you spin it. The difference between pushing 1500w or 3kW into the hot plate is "how quickly do you get to boiling", and has basically no bearing on the total amount of energy used to boil the water. Running a 1500w kettle for twice as long will use the same amount of energy, from the same source.
Using consumable li-ion/alkaline batteries to supplement that energy is _terribly_ wasteful - we've been through the "reduce reuse recycle" loop already with waste, lets not do the same thing with rare earth metals to avoid running a single cable to household appliances.
> Which isn't true at all. They make a token effort.
Look, the point was whether or not it would be okay to put batteries on it, not whether it would keep a drink warm for 12 hours. If the base is cool to the touch, I think it will be completely fine for batteries to be near it. If anything, making sure they're safe from shorting is probably a bigger concern.
> You're technically correct, the worst kind of correct.
The point wasn't to be technically correct, it's to point out that you can compare the properties of the two types of batteries like-for-like and realize that for many people interested in a faster kettle the boiling water tank idea might not be great. In America most homes have a water heater and it has to contend with the same sort of problem, only we use hot water multiple times a day every day (and at least in the Midwest, use LNG for heating it a lot of the time, which makes it economical if not particularly environmentally friendly.)
> It takes ~320 kJ of energy to bring a litre of water from room temp to boiling, no matter what way you spin it. The difference between pushing 1500w or 3kW into the hot plate is "how quickly do you get to boiling", and has basically no bearing on the total amount of energy used to boil the water. Running a 1500w kettle for twice as long will use the same amount of energy, from the same source.
Well duh. My very first post in this thread is estimating how much energy is required for a typical kettle to bring a U.S. cup of water to a boil. (Though obviously in reality you have to account for losses.)
My point here is that (a relatively small niche of) people are already doing crazy things like rewiring their houses (in America) to push pretty absurd power into kettles just boil water slightly faster, a time save that literally only even matters if you sit there and wait idly while the water heats up. The problem I have isn't that higher wattage kettles are somehow bad, it's that all of this time, effort and money for a time save measured in minutes is crazy. And it's the same for strapping batteries to a kettle or for keeping a water tank of boiling water too. I wouldn't bother with any of them, and don't. (But, as I opened this thread with, seeing how crazy people get over this, I do remain surprised at the relatively few battery kettles on the market.)
> Using consumable li-ion/alkaline batteries to supplement that energy is _terribly_ wasteful - we've been through the "reduce reuse recycle" loop already with waste, lets not do the same thing with rare earth metals to avoid running a single cable to household appliances.
I just counted and the room I'm currently standing in has 8 separate high capacity lithium ion batteries. We put batteries in our power tools, laptops, vacuum cleaners, tooth brushes, game controllers, wireless computer peripherals, air compressors, UPS units, the phone someone is currently reading this comment on, air dusters, garden lighting and certainly much more. Almost everything with electronics in it has batteries for something (if you inlcude smaller ones like clock batteries), and more often than ever, high capacity ones no less.
A battery operated kettle will forever be an expensive niche product, and it wouldn't even use that much battery in the first place. The environmental impact of all of those batteries would struggle to get to the level of 100 electric vehicles, and yet we are selling over 10 million of those per year.
Of all of the contrived and silly arguments, this is by far the most contrived and silliest of all of them.
I'm in the midst of a kitchen remodel (in 120V land).
I decided to pull an extra 240V line to the countertop explicitly for a tea kettle, which I have not purchased yet but seem to be available from Amazon UK for ~2x the price of an ordinary US-market kettle.
The most disappointing thing so far is the short list of kettle options that ship from the UK to the US.
Also not sure if I should get a UK receptacle (this would probably offend the bldg inspector, so I might swap post-inspection), or just rewire the kettle itself with a standard US (240V) plug.
FWIW, the extra wire + breaker cost was about $100. I expect to pay another $30 or so for the receptacle or appliance wire, and a bit over $100 for the kettle (and its replacements every few years). Not the least expensive option, but not too bad.
Personally I would just wire some NEMA 240V outlet and then have a separate adapter with a pigtail of that receptacle type and a workbox with the UK receptacle. It's a little unwieldy, but it puts the questionable hackery outside the realm of the building inspection at least.
Whether it's actually safe I though, that I am curious. Obviously the kettle can get the 240V potential it expects, but the neutral is center tapped out of the split phase transformer, right? Not sure how people wire this. (Doesn't the neutral wind up having to be one of the hots instead?)
Hmm, yeah! I hadn't thought much about the differences between UK and US 240VAC service.
In the US, it's 240V 60Hz, split-phase with center-tapped neutral, and an independent ground wire.
In the UK, it's 240V 50Hz, single-phase with independent neutral and ground.
Frequency difference should be within design tolerance. and if my EE memory serves, the phase difference should be acceptable -- just measured from a different zero reference point. The neutral from the wall would be unused, and the ground would be wired as usual.
I'll think this through thoroughly though, I was definitely glossing over those details, so thank you!
Basically my concern is, ordinarily the potential from neutral to ground would be roughly 0V with some slack. In this case, though, the potential from neutral to ground would necessarily be 120V. I have no idea what the implications of that may be, but it seems important.
Go for a German kettle instead of a British one. Schuko wall plugs are reversible, so there will be no assumptions about neutral vs. ground.
Both live and neutral wires have to be treated as if they were both live, because 50% of the time they'll be swapped around.
I think it works if the US neutral is left unused (terminated in the electrical box).
E.g, something like this:
I think this is right, but I'm not 100%. The kettle should get what it needs, but I'm less certain whether a GFCI or ArcFCI breaker would have opinions that must be accounted for. I'll check with someone more qualified than myself to be sure!Yes I understand. But what I'm saying is, normally neutral and ground would have roughly 0V potential, but in this case the UK neutral and UK ground will have 120V potential between them, because the US 120V second phase will have 120V potential to ground. (It bears noting that I am just a random guy and not any kind of expert. No formal education or credentials relating to electricity whatsoever.)
I think you're thinking about it on the kettle side, and I was thinking on the breaker side.
I think the kettle side would not care. It may be a ground fault in UK wires, but the kettle has no reason to detect it, and nothing sensitive enough inside to care. If I'm wrong, I'd expect to know shortly after starting the very first use. :)
You guys know he talks about this 4 minutes into the video, right?
See also: https://diy.stackexchange.com/a/315031
One thing in that thread;
> Most UK kettles are not 3000W, and most of the ones that are, are junk. Y
They may not be 3 kW, but even the most basic of them are 2200W [0], and 3000W ones are readily available are not much more expensive [1]. They're also not really junk - they're a lump of plastic, a hot plate and a thermistor - the difference between a £8 one and a £80 one is almost all aesthetics.
[0] https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3102039
[1] https://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-kettle-1-5l/white/p5523...
Err, well, from the title, I expected it to be a garage experimentation video without practical information. Thanks for the correction. :)
Video was published last week and reaches the same conclusions as this thread. Timely, and reassuring! Thanks for the SE link too.
I watched the video already before this HN thread, being a Technology Connections subscriber, but I genuinely forgot or missed that it discussed that aspect. I'm not surprised, though.
No need to rewire anything - just get a universal plug adapter for NEMA 6-15P (or whatever your kitchen outlet is going to be) from Amazon, plug it onto the UK plug of your kettle, and Bob’s your uncle. (The building inspector doesn’t need to even see your kettle and plug.)
That does sound like a much better idea, thank you!
The molded, sealed plug of a UK kettle would fare much better in a wet kitchen environment than an aftermarket plug you'd manually install (moisture can get inside and corrode the terminals and connections).
I agree. If I replace the wire, I'd get an assembly with the correct US molded plug (NEMA 14-30?), and perform the wire replacement inside the kettle itself. Your reason is good, but I'd do it that way for the aesthetics alone. :)
People that care about the time it takes to boil water just have an instant hot water boiler on (or under) their bench.
It's probably just the price of batteries. You can definitely do this and you'd need like 8 18650 batteries, which today you can get on amazon for $30 USD. A decade ago it might have cost $200-$300.
Given that premium kettles already sell for about $100, there's definitely room for an ultra premium kettle that boils water laughably fast for $150.
Impulse Labs is doing exactly this..
I believe there master plan foresees a future where batteries are more integrated with a house for decentralized grid storage. But the additional consumer advantage is better hardware - i.e cooking time.
That seems a terrible waste of batteries to me. A boiling water tap seems like a better idea to me - electric heater with a pressurised insulated vessel that just dispenses from your tap.
I've seen those around, even with an integrated carbonator to get sparkling water right from the tap. They're neat but also ridiculously expensive
https://www.quooker.co.uk/ - these are the only "boiling water" ones (as in 100 degrees C), but if you're ok with 98C, then you can get https://www.screwfix.com/p/swirl-danube-3-in-1-instant-boili... instead for 25% of the price.
Sure, but over in 230V-land 3500W hot plates are completely standard, and can plug into any regular wall socket. Same with microwaves and hot-air ovens: just put it anywhere on your kitchen countertop and plug it into the nearest socket.
We do also have a "kitchen plug" for high-powered appliances. Those go up to 7.3kW in their regular dual-single-phase 16A version, 11kW when wired with three phases (quite common in households these days), or even 17kW with the (understandably) rarely-used 25A plug variant with three-phase wiring.
And that's not even commercial equipment, just what you'd pick up at your local Best Buy equivalent. The commercial stuff uses CeeForm, which is a three-phase 16A/32A/63A/125A plug. Or it's getting hard-wired.
What is the specific standard for domestic 16 A and 25 A 3-phase plugs you’re referring to?
Not OP but - I can't answer the specific regs, but 16A/240V is absolutely bog standard for the UK and every high street store stocks ovens that will draw this down. They need to be on their own circuit, e.g. this [0].
I've never seen a single oven pull more than this, but devices like [1] are fairly common where you have two independent ovens in one, and it can pull 21A - this would necessitate the 25A supply.
As for three phase - https://www.howdens.com/-/media/howdens/assets/clh_asset_pro... this hob (which I have) will take 3-phase 16A, or single phase 32A. I've not come across any 32A 3-phase devices for home usage, though.
[0] https://ao.com/product/b54cr71g0b-neff-n70-slide--hide-elect...
[1] https://www.smeguk.com/products/DUSF6300X
Perilex.
I swear Vevor makes everything.
It's a Chinese reseller, with some quality control maybe but surely some great service attached to it. But you'll find 90% without vevor Logo on AliExpress.
Still big fan and regular customer, very surprised to see they have a .ca too and likely more.
Great video, but coincidentally two weeks too late for me:
I never knew about the boil auto-shut-off mechanism and the overheat/"boil-dry" protection circuit being two different things in some kettles. In those, pouring out the entire water before the auto-off had a chance to kick in can cause a situation where the kettle stays on (due to not enough steam being present to trip it), but the boil-dry protection circuit continuously engages and disengages until somebody notices or the thing self-destroys – ours did the latter.
Now we have one with a switch at the bottom, and I'm hoping that due to that construction, the boil-dry protection will also disengage the switch if needed. (It also helps that the switch automatically disengages when lifting the kettle off its base.)
I have a kettle with 5°-settable temperature targets that has transformed my tea drinking.
It also has a function to hold temperature for up to 30 minutes, and because it has actual logic going on inside, when you lift it off the base it knows this and won't turn back on when you put it back.
I have an electric water boiler like that also. I have to be very mindful to press a button to turn it off if i return it empty to the induction plate/holder otherwise it starts clicking and beeping and freaking out.
> the boil-dry protection circuit continuously engages and disengages until somebody notices or the thing self-destroys – ours did the latter.
It is always fascinating to see unforeseen failure modes created by automation.
I am a farmer with giant water pumps and center pivots that run on 3 phase 480 volt power. One of my pumps has 85 horsepower. I wonder if I could wire up some sort of custom made tea kettle and get water to boil in five seconds?
You could run (10) of these 9kW 480V three-phase immersion heaters [0] in place of your 85 HP motor, assuming ~110A FLA @ 480V = 91.5kW. The 9kW immersion heaters are 10.8A each at 480V three-phase (would be 75A if it was 120V single-phase!)
Just make sure you have somewhere for the steam to go, it takes up a bit more room than water ;)
Is your three-phase a corner-grounded delta service? I’ve never seen one in the wild but I hear they’re used for three-phase ag service drops that are strictly used to run motors. A and C are tapped normally on the secondary but the B phase is bonded to ground and also a line conductor, conductor color is white for B phase instead of orange.
[0] https://iseinc.com/_shop/480v-3ph-9kw-immersion-heater-47-14...
For a small amount of water, I would be afraid of flashing the water into steam, and the resulting steam explosion.
Well, that's about what happens in Sauna with electric stove.
In Finland we do it every day and have done decades already.
Those who may not know electric stoves have been about fifty years common use at least in urban environments. Stoves have anything from three, one in each of three phase current used heating elements (resistor coils) 400V 6-8 kW power draw commonly in small house stoves and 2-3 times that swimming baths saunas stoves.
While sitting topmost sauna benches bathing, we throw fresh water from bucket with a sauna laddle (saunakauha) water to stove(s) anything from small drippings to a pint with trying to little spread it out. This is to get steam and make it pleasant relaxing 'löyly' as we call it.
The stove is usually heated about an hour or so before starting bathing to get temperature somewhere 70°-100°C (158-212°F).
It's not advisable to have stove showing those red hot glowing elements peeking out behind stones, but it does happen if stones were not laid properly. But even if water gets directly to elements those will not break or get any damage as they are made intentionally to resist that.
So boiling water practically immediately does happen, it's not particularly dangerous when applied in circumstances where equipment is made to withstand that is nothing miraculous. And that really happens millions of times each day in Finland and some other places where that kind of sauna culture is practised both at people private homes and also public swimming baths saunas alike.
I will be observing it next time about in 14 hours from this writing as I'm going swimming as usual tomorrow morning at 6:00 am. when pool opens early tomorrow, and then likewise twice more (Wed, Fri). Also once more (Thu) evening sauna reservation slot i've got this flat I live.
There is a quite good english page about Finish sauna in Wikipedia, but to get a glimpse what modern sauna and stoves look Harvia a long time stove manufacturer web pages you get some sense what I'm writing about.
- https://www.harvia.com/en/
It’s a good point but there might be a pretty big difference in force because the ladled pint of water is not contained on any axis. A pint of water in a cup, with up as the only exit, subjected to the full current of a 3 phase 480v circuit is probably going to generate a good size jet of steam straight up.
Yeah, that's true that water thrown to a stove isn't much contained anything but that bathing room. Some of water will of course flow between stones bit deeper, but there is plenty of room to expand when it boils to steam.
Some firm hissing, minor clanking noise from stones is normal and even bit sharper noise when a stone cracks is what water use on stove causes when stones get old and are used lot. Stove should be cleaned periodically when it's cold depending on how much it's been used and there is need to replace stones or even all of them if it's been long time and there is some sand accumulation stove bottom grill or plate, whatever it has to hold stones falling trough. Family houses cleaning perhaps 1/yr and public saunas open 6 am to 8 pm 300 plus days a year, they will do stove maintenance every or every other month.
And yes, getting good amount of steam of course is what's been whole goal in this kind of sauna use and what we prefer. Some other places where they have begun to call it sauna too, they may not even allow to use water nothing but as drinking water and usually they don't warm up that 'sauna' as hot as we tend to do or if they do it's more like Turkish bath type then.
And that's why nobody invites you to parties.
Because he keeps flash boiling steam at the party and burning the guests?
For sure, you could use six 240V heating elements wired in series in three pairs to get their rated power.
Of you can wire 240V elements directly to 480V to quadruple the power, as shown in the video ;)
3-phase electeode Boiler comes to mind. Just have it as a pass-through with a grounded shield at the end to keep you from accidentally touching dangerous voltage.
Wouldn't that cause electrolysis and make the water unsafe to drink?
What do you imagine happens to water when it undergoes electrolysis?
It breaks down into its individual components which escape as gases. That alone shouldn't make the remaining water toxic, assuming a perfect reaction. But I guess the reaction isn't perfect due to things like impurities, the metals used as electrodes and so on?
There is something like that in the original video - running a 120 V kettle at 240 V makes it boil four times as fast. But only a few times.
You might need a pressure vessel and a stirrer to hit 100 deg C in 5 seconds.
I would love to see that.
You can run an induction range top off a nema 14-50 and be boiling in like a minute
A 2022 Technology Connections video explores various ways to boil water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c
And a 2020 video about different voltages in the US electrical systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4
How to overclock your kettle :)
I'm sure there was a period where one couldn't find a 3kW kettle in the UK on power efficiency grounds, one was supposed to run a 2kW one instead to save the planet. But now when I search I find 3kW models again. So either that was a nightmare of some sort or sanity has prevailed.
Chatgpt thinks this was threatened in 2010 then postponed in 2016 then cancelled, which vaguely aligns with my timeline of interest in tea.
I highly doubt that. Electric kettles are just about 100% efficient, and the only difference between a 3kW kettle and a 2kW one is how long it'll take to boil. The total energy consumed will be more-or-less the same.
Are you perhaps conflating it with the EU regulations on vacuum cleaners going in around 2017? As with all EU regulations, this of course resulted in a decent bunch of EU-bashing in UK media by the usual suspects - despite less-power-hungry vacuum cleaners being just as effective as the more power-hungry ones, and power consumption being inflated by manufacturers to market their vacuums, as plenty of people believed that "bigger number = more suck = more better".
UK power grid has the Eastenders effect. Where the ending credits of the Eastenders soap signals a large increase in power draw from the grid as people will put on the tea kettle at the end of the show. The grid operators have to dispatch enough power to cover for this.
While the amount of energy used to boil water at 2kW is not significantly different from 3kW (2kW has a tiny amount of more atmospheric losses I think), there is a difference for the impact on the grid. Same energy but more power generating and transmission line capacity needed.
Here's a video showing an engineer at the national grid bringing hydro-electric plants online at the closing credits of a popular soap opera in anticipation of the millions of kettle that are about to be switched on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA
But the more powerful kettle should be slightly more efficient[0] because there is less time for heat to escape from the kettle while the water is being heated.
[0] Energy efficiency at boiling the water. A kettle is always 100% effective at making heat.
You could use vacuum like in a vacuum flask. In fact to my surprise the product seems to already exists although its selling point is how long it holds water hot after boiling and not its efficiency.
A larger heating element is very slightly more efficient due to less heat escaping as the liquid is heated more quickly. Resistive electric heating is always 100% efficient no matter the size of the heating element.
Keep in mind that heat is constantly being transferred between things that are different temperatures, the faster something reaches the set point temperature, the less time there is to lose heat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation
If we really cared about efficiency of these devices, they'd be insulated.
There was no such thing in the UK. ChatGPT is trained to produce text that fulfills the user's expectations. If you put a prejudiced prompt in, expect a corresponding result.
People are downvoting you because your story seems crazy, but you’re right (and wrong).
In the early 2010s there were reports that the EU was set to ban 3kW kettles in the anti-EU tabloid press.
The ‘plans’ were discussions, were general (about ‘high energy appliances’, not specifically kettles), and never got beyond the initial discussion stage - according to the same press because of fears they would drive Britons to vote for Brexit, although I’m not sure I believe that. As other commenters say, unlike other appliances that could be made more efficient, kettles are almost 100% efficient already, so the power draw doesn’t really matter. I still have some faith the authorities looking into home appliance energy efficiency would know that.
https://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/eu_not_banning_kettles
https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/politics/eu-pauses-p...