I’ve heard electric kettles are slower here because of the limits of our electrical system. I do have a kettle for the stove, though. I also rarely drink tea.
Standard outlets in the USA are 120v at 15A (1800W max peak, 1440W max continuous). In comparison, standard UK outlets are 230v at 13A (2990W peak)
This also affects other things. For example, standard electric heaters (resistive heat) can’t get as hot in the USA.
Edit: Also, dryers in countries like UK and Australia don’t need a special type of outlet.
Due to a quirk of unifying 2 standards, Europe and the UK, the range is 216.2 volts to 253.0 volts.
That encompasses infrastructure built to a tighter tolerance around 220V in Europe and infrastructure built to a tighter tolerance around 240V in the UK (and Australia).
We expect 3150W out of a kettle most of the time. Our heaters will say 3kW.
Usually you’ll find a few volts over 240 out of our outlets and that’s to design spec.
Thanks for the info! I’ve never actually lived in the UK so I was just guessing based on what I’ve read online.
I was going to use Australia as an example (since I was born there) but standard outlets in Australia are only 10A so they’re not quite as powerful as the UK ones :). There’s 15A outlets but they’re not very common.
That’s true, because you use a 110V based system you have less power available to the kettle. It’s still a lot faster than an electric stove though. Not faster than an induction stove, probably.
We have a 2 phase, 120v or 240v. Standard wall outlets only have 1 phase at 120v and a 15amp limit.
Residential service is a single split 240v phase off of a 480V 3-phase line, while something like an apartment is 2 phase 208Y, with a single phase is 120V.
My friends just put a euro style 220 outlet on their counter and ordered a kettle online. Since they were building the house new it was basically no different than buying a 110v kettle.
Technically it wouldn’t be to us code. It would be way smarter to just install a NEMA outlet and use an adapter, or even better just replace the plug on the kettle.
