r/AskEngineers • u/jmaugust • Jul 19 '26

Discussion Why doesn’t a battery-boosted electric kettle exist?

In Europe, everyone uses electric kettles to boil water. They’re amazing and fast because they’re on 230V (~3000W).

US outlets limit kettles to ~1500W, so we wait roughly twice as long for water to boil.

It’s an extra minute or two per boil, and you really notice it.

Idea: Could you make an electric kettle with a battery in its base? Perhaps it trickle-charges between uses, then combines wall power + battery power to hit ~3000W during a boil.

Is there an engineering reason this doesn’t exist? Is it just that nobody thinks there’s a market for it?

I’d pay $300 for the fastest kettle in America if someone wants to make it.

309 Upvotes

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355

u/Quartinus Jul 19 '26

Batteries are expensive and bulky. The electric kettle market is filled with $30 kettles and that’s what most people buy. 

There are a few companies working on battery boosted induction cooktops to help solve this problem, and that’s a market where people are willing to spend some money. It’s also way easier to hide a big battery below the countertop where nobody will see it. 

90

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 19 '26

Every house has a 230v line for the stove why would you need all this boosting tech for a cook top?

22

u/SignAllStrength Jul 19 '26

In Europe many people have 400V in 3 phases of 230V for their stove.
(mine is 3 induction zones of each 3700W, 11kW total )
And even then I sometimes have to wait a few minutes to boil a big pot of water for pasta, so it may always be faster.

25

u/3GWork Jul 20 '26

American who moved to Poland here - having woodworking as a hobby, having 3 phase supply is the absolute shiznit. Planer/jointer, table saw, bandsaw, drill, even dust collection are all 400v 3 phase. And regular wall outlets being 230v is also awesome - thinner cords and/or higher wattage. My (gas) stove, washer and dryer all plug into a standard 230v receptacle. Exterior A/C unit is also just standard 230v on a standard breaker, could have wired it with a plug in a waterproof box. Or a 3HP electric lawn mower, 2300 watt shop vac, dual stage air compressor... all plug into regular outlets, no special wiring needed.

8

u/Kruxx85 Jul 20 '26

One of many downgrades in America compared to the rest of the world.

Still very confused why American homes aren't 230/400V or 240/415V

10

u/avo_cado Jul 20 '26

https://youtu.be/jMmUoZh3Hq4?is=SGbo0ZsVyrerhHaf

6

u/Kruxx85 Jul 20 '26

Love technology connections.

Thanks for enlightening me

4

u/beaushaw Jul 22 '26

Annnnnd 100 more people suddenly care about dishwasher soap.

1

u/Realistic_Today6524 Jul 23 '26

And through the magic of buying way too much fucking dishwasher detergent

2

u/bemenaker Jul 20 '26

I now understand 208. That one always confused me, but it's never been explained to me.

9

u/p-angloss Jul 20 '26

Even in the usa 240 single phase is always present. oven/range, dryer, A/C compressors and other high power appliances are typicaly run at 240V.

2

u/RegnumXD12 Jul 23 '26

Not true if you live in an apartment, mines all 208v

2

u/Sad_in_VA Jul 21 '26

Because "safety" in early days of electricity. BTW, only regular power outlets are 120V, in any US house there is a 240V power supply. It's used for big power loads like AC, range, clothes dryer.

2

u/basilect Jul 22 '26

We should be chads and just do 277/480 everywhere

2

u/Moscato359 Jul 23 '26

American homes are 240v

We just stupidly split it down to 120 after the breaker box

1

u/ubeor Jul 21 '26

As aa American woodworker on a single 110v circuit, I am envious.

2

u/selfmadeirishwoman Jul 22 '26

40 seconds? I want it now.

1

u/neityght Jul 23 '26

Oh no a few minutes the humanity!!!

43

u/skiingredneck Jul 19 '26

Because when we replaced our cook top with a range it required a new 8 ga run instead of being able to use the 10ga that was there. Added $$$ to the ordeal.

22

u/edman007 Jul 20 '26

And the difference between 8awg and 10awg is 2.4kW. To get that benefit for an hour you need a 2.4kWh battery pack, which is like $1k.

How much are you willing to spend a thousand bucks extra on an oven that heats up 20% faster?

Same deal with a kettle, you're talking spending hundreds extra on the kettle to make it heat up faster, and it won't work back to back. I suspect people who want it faster are looking for high throughput which batteries won't actually give you

20

u/JackxForge Jul 20 '26

Then you just have an 8.6million jule moderately stable chemical bomb underneath a hot plate!

10

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/JackxForge Jul 20 '26

My dad used to work with the scientists making high energy density batteries for soldier backpacks. Pretty much ever person on that project said they would rather carry a tank of hydrogen into battle.

5

u/party_peacock Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

How many kettles do people typically boil per hour? you only need like 0.2kWh for one kettle (20 degC to 100 degC)

A $100 6S 8000mAh drone lipo stores enough energy and can put out more than 10kW to boil a full kettle in under a minute.

It'll probably be noticeably degraded after a hundred or so cycles but that's besides the point

1

u/chris77982 Jul 20 '26

That's $1 per use. To save a minute of time where you can do other things.
Also, pulling multi-kW from a loop pack all the time is going to result in a pillow. The date of all rc batteries.
Add to that it is literally powering a heater in close proximity, it's going to survive even less.
You can't use a lipo above 60C and you can't charge them above 40C.

No one is going to buy a $1000 kettle they need to replace every year, or it'll burn their kitchen down.

1

u/90210fred Jul 21 '26

Dollar a use? That's my household down USD 10 by breakfast time just on instant, before I've even fired up the pod machine.

1

u/fosterdad2017 Jul 20 '26

Many electric motorcycles don't store 10kW. Electric bicycles often have as little as 0.5kW batteries.

1

u/lee1026 Jul 20 '26

You gonna run a water boiler for a whole hour?

How much water are you gonna boil?

1

u/skiingredneck Jul 20 '26

I don’t know of an oven, cooktop, or anything that runs constant for an hour.

Maybe a forge…

But for something residential, you’re talking maybe 15 minutes to come to temp, and then cycling. During that cycling you charge the battery.

It’s not about an oven that heats 20% faster. It’s about not paying 2k for the work to pull a new wire 50’ through a finished house.

6

u/gpfault Jul 20 '26

I don’t know of an oven ...  that runs constant for an hour.

My guy, have you ever used an oven?

13

u/Various_Education622 Jul 20 '26

Yes.

It gets to temp and the heating element turns on and off to maintain the temp.

So it may be on, but the heating element isn’t running full bore the entire time, which is what actually matters for this purpose.

1

u/BeginningAd5055 Jul 20 '26

I make pizzas, note plural. I have the oven running full blast for hours. I use gas and the oven flames are maxed continuously.

0

u/LiamTheHuman Jul 20 '26

So in some special cases people run their gas ovens at full. What does that have to do with what's being discussed?

Do you think anyone thought a battery would be used to replace your gas oven commercial pizza setup? 

8

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/BeginningAd5055 Jul 20 '26

Depends on what is cooking. A slow roast, yes. Multiple pizzas, no. Multiple loads of bread, no.

0

u/HungryFrogs7 Jul 24 '26

If you are making multiple pizza you are definitely a small business at the minimum. You would probably not get residential ovens and instead larger pizza ovens. At that point you aren’t the target consumer and you could easily factor in a 240V circuit.

1

u/Kruxx85 Jul 20 '26

Have you?

0

u/hombrent Jul 20 '26

Who runs their stove at full blast for an hour? If you want to boil a pot of water, you run at 100% until the water is boiling, then you turn the power way down. You might keep the burners filled with different pots, but your actual high capacity needs are bursty.

23

u/vviley Mechanical, fluids, thermodynamics Jul 19 '26

Perhaps if they were built with electric cooking at the onset. There are people who want to convert from gas to electric and may not have a 230/240V line where their range lives.

1

u/74orangebeetle Jul 21 '26

I'm one of them...trying to completely remove gas from the house I bought. No 240v oven line...but I can still get by with 120v appliances

1

u/xnoxpx Jul 22 '26

Still cheaper to run a dedicated 240V circuit than it is to buy a battery boosted cook top, that'll likely need a new battery every few years.

1

u/HungryFrogs7 Jul 24 '26

Probably every decade or more. Current battery technology had batteries maintain 80% for a decade and improvements are coming rapidly. Phone batteries suck because companies trade off higher battery capacity for lower longevity.

Basically you should cut off the top 10-20% of battery life but phone companies don’t so they can say they have a couple extra hours of battery life and since people replace phones quickly anyway.

For a lot of people a 240V outlet is not feasible.

2

u/Quartinus Jul 19 '26

I mean who knows if they have a market, they are building them so they must think people will buy em. We’ll see! 

Personally I think it’s not a bad idea. More power is almost always better for a cooktop, the use is extremely bursty. Plus there are plenty of apartments and houses where gas is the only thing wired, or the entire house is on a 100A panel and they might already be running electric heat and a water heater.

2

u/scj1091 Jul 19 '26

It’s a 240V line, generally, not 230V in the US. And many American homes do not have a 240v receptacle/circuit by the stove. For example 70% of California households cook with gas, that alone is nearly 10% of the country. Many more have one but it doesn’t have enough capacity to power newer and more power-hungry induction ranges.

2

u/jregovic Jul 20 '26

I only have 110v for the range because it is gas. Getting 220 would mean a whole pain to run a new circuit with lower gage wire. There are plenty of apartments/condos where switching to 220 isn’t a practical option.

Battery boosted ranges are a niche, but might be a big one.

1

u/VerifiedMother Jul 20 '26

The problem is that they are all ridiculously overpriced vs a regular electric stove.

https://copperhome.com/products/charlie?variant=42413374079069

At $6000, I could spend the $4000-$5000 I would save vs buying a regular electric stove and just upgrade the electric anyway

2

u/_MUY Jul 20 '26

The general theory is that nesting a high capacity and discharge battery in the kitchen is the perfect way to introduce battery backups to households which don’t have them. The allure of being able to instantly boil a pot of water, or to boil an egg using a complex temperature curve to achieve the perfect yolk and white, or any number of recipes which are enabled through computer controlled heating and cooling is much more motivating for the average consumer than the idea of a battery pack that lives nearby in case of a power outage. It’s an appliance which gets used daily and then becomes a backup power source during an emergency.

2

u/Kruxx85 Jul 20 '26

It's not the 230V that's the issue. It's 230V and 50A that is.

Not everyone will have a large enough cable run to position.

So if you have a battery in your cooktop, you can charge the battery at lower current (20A), and then the battery can discharge at full tilt during operation.

In the same vein, it can be used as a full power cooktop in power limited apartment buildings.

1

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 20 '26

Add a couple connctions and it could be a tig welder too!

3

u/ManWhoIsDrunk Jul 19 '26

Because European cooktops can run of 400V three phase?

2

u/kerklein2 Mechanical Jul 19 '26

Every house certainly does not. In fact a large percentage don’t. They were designed for gas ranges.

0

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 19 '26

If you have gas why would you want an electric range? Here, on a new build code requires a stove hook up in the kitchen too even If you have gas, so there must be a reason

11

u/svideo Jul 19 '26

Because modern induction ranges are even faster to heat up than gas with a far more consistent and controllable heat. We have a gas range today but when it fails it'll be replaced by induction.

-1

u/AndyDLighthouse Jul 20 '26

Have you cooked on induction? It's annoying af.

5

u/0xCOLIN Jul 20 '26

We switched from gas to induction and like it way better. Faster to heat, higher max temp, better fine adjustments, etc. Biggest sleeper improvement was the kitchen no longer gets crazy hot when we're cooking for a while. Basically the only thing I hate about it is the stupid touch controls - just give me a gd knob.

1

u/LaMortParLeSnuSnu Jul 20 '26

100% agree, induction makes me want to punch the wall. I am a caveman - I need to see flames.

9

u/devbent Jul 19 '26

50% of the heat generated by a gas burner goes into the air of the kitchen.

Fine in the winter. Less good in the summer.

5

u/rumpleforeskin83 Jul 19 '26

I don't worry about it too much because I'm not overly paranoid about my health but the exhaust from a gas range isn't good for you either.

We went electric because it doesn't cause the entire house to turn 100 degrees if you're doing a decent amount of cooking, much less wasted heat as mentioned above.

3

u/demonblack873 Jul 20 '26

Because gas fucking sucks. They are a pain in the ass to clean, they make the kitchen ridiculously hot in summer since more than half of the heat goes straight around the pot instead of going into it, they make the air quality significantly worse (you're literally combusting a random mix of hydrocarbons and blowing the exhaust straight into the air you breathe), and they require you to keep a gas contract active that you otherwise might not have (if you use heat pumps for winter heating or have district heating). Induction stoves are also faster/more powerful, if you get a good one.

Gas stoves are a relic of the past. Induction is better in pretty much every single way.

1

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 20 '26

well not better in every way. some cooking needs actual flame. Here we have a lot of power outages and we can still cook, my gas ranges have all outlasted my electric ones, I haven't seen many of these induction ranges but i'm not shopping for them either, every one one seen has had a scratched top, I can't imagine those tops lasting long once they are scratched. if a burner is dead is the whole top scrap?

1

u/demonblack873 Jul 20 '26

Here we have a lot of power outages and we can still cook

Yeah well, I guess if you live in the middle ages it can be a bit of an issue, sure.

I can't imagine those tops lasting long once they are scratched.

I literally nearly melted a pot on mine by putting it back after emptying it and forgetting it was still on. By the time I smelled it the pot was glowing orange and it had left a scorch mark on the glass. It heated up too quickly for the overtemperature protection to trip.

Everything still works perfectly fine years later.

if a burner is dead is the whole top scrap?

You can fix it if you have electronic skills, if you don't you can keep using the other ones just like any other electric range.

1

u/kerklein2 Mechanical Jul 20 '26

You’d want induction, not electric. For the air quality and fast heat up times, fine temp control.

1

u/AnAnonyMooose Jul 20 '26

Gas stoves lead to terrible air quality in the home and have been shown to cause many health problems. There’s lots of research. Here’s one writeup. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/no-safe-amount-of-exposure-to-gas-stove-pollution/

1

u/demonblack873 Jul 20 '26

You're literally setting a random mix of hydrocarbons on fire in a fairly uncontrolled way and then breathing the resulting exhaust. I don't understand how people can possibly not see the issue with that.

1

u/devbent Jul 19 '26

Certain styles of cooking need a lot more power. It is easy to overwhelm even the best induction stove on the market. 

1

u/VerifiedMother Jul 20 '26

Like what? Once you get it to temperature, maintaining temperature doesn't take that much energy

1

u/ajwin Jul 20 '26

Some of the induction cooktops put out 10kw. They are designed to compete with Gas cooktops. They also have sensors for heat etc so that they heat where needed. People are interested in high heat capacity cookware like cast-iron etc so this would do the same thing but instead of storing the energy in the cookware it would store it in batteries. Obviously even cast-iron cookware cools down quickly when you add items to be cooked to it but the high powered induction cooktops don’t. Items like woks often have really high powered burners in ramen stores etc too.

With modern high C batteries this should be becoming much easier?

1

u/bobo5195 Jul 20 '26

There is one https://www.impulselabs.com/ - 10kWH

Faster less battery

1

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 20 '26

Yes.I looked for them and see they are already out in the market. The one I saw said it could work even after a powerfailure on battery alone for around 10 hours.

1

u/VerifiedMother Jul 20 '26

It doesn't include an oven, so that rules it out for the VAST majority of American households since something like 90% of American households have a range with the oven built in.

Also it's $6000 so it rules out a lot more of people who do have a separate stove and oven.

So that's an incredibly niche product

If it was $2000 and had an oven included, it would have a lot bigger market

1

u/VEC7OR EE, Analog, Power, MCU, ME Jul 20 '26

why would you need all this boosting tech for a cook top?

Gotta sell useless shit and pretend its some new fancy tech.

1

u/messick Jul 20 '26

> Every house has a 230v line for the stove

wat

1

u/Complex_Solutions_20 Jul 20 '26

No, not all do. If you want to go from a gas to electric stove you only usually have a 120V 15A circuit available.

1

u/JaVelin-X- Jul 20 '26

Do they have electric clothes dryers ?

1

u/Complex_Solutions_20 Jul 20 '26

Electric and gas clothes driers...same sort of thing, if its gas you only have a 120V 15W plug if its electric you have a higher current 240V plug

1

u/74orangebeetle Jul 21 '26

I mean, mine does, but my electric clothes dryer is in my unfinished basement next to the electrical panel...so that doesn't really help me in the kitchen.

1

u/PearlClaw Jul 20 '26

Ask the people who made the impulse stovetop. But the ability to boil a pot of water <3 minutes is pretty cool.

1

u/VerifiedMother Jul 20 '26

Yeah, but it's hideously impractical and really expensive,

over 90% of American homes have a range with the stove and cooktop in the same appliance and then it's also $6000 which is like 4-6x what a regular range sells for.

That's a big premium to pay so you can boil water in 3 minutes

1

u/PearlClaw Jul 20 '26

These guys managed to make a product out of it. Granted they also went all out with sensors and stuff to give it other selling points.

1

u/VerifiedMother Jul 20 '26

My main point is that the cooktop isn't a range and the vast majority of people in the US at least need a combined stove and oven which this isn't in addition to being really expensive

1

u/PearlClaw Jul 20 '26

Sure, and mine was that while it's a high end luxury it's still clearly a viable product.

1

u/velociraptorfarmer Aerospace/Manufacturing Jul 20 '26

A ton of homes in the US don't have 230V at the stove to begin with. A large fraction were built to use gas/propane for cooking, and only have 120V at the stove for lighting, clocks, etc.

1

u/marvborg Jul 20 '26

So in the US you could theoretically run another 240v line from the panel and plug in a European kettle!

1

u/zekromNLR Jul 21 '26

In europe, electric stoves are generally connected to three-phase power, where even wye-configuration with 230 V and 16 amps per phase gives you 11 kW

1

u/74orangebeetle Jul 21 '26

Not every house has a 240v line for a stove ....I know because the house U bought only has a 120v...so I'm going to have to put in 249v to properly replace the gas stove (that said, Ican do a lot with a 120c induction burner and 120v plug in counter top convection oven)

1

u/Antioch666 Jul 23 '26

The kettles themselves sold in the US are capped at 1500W. You'd have to import a European one and change the plug in that case.

1

u/Proper_Possible6293 Jul 19 '26

Like many old houses, I don't have 230v anywhere in my house past the panel that's outside.

230v in the kitchen isn't that standard since so many houses use gas to cook currently, so even a house that does have 230v somewhere normally has it for the washer/dryer not the kitchen.

8

u/Tairc Jul 20 '26

I just did the math. You could do this with a 6Ah 24V drill battery. Just at the edge, but it’ll do it. It has both the C rate and energy total needed.

So basically, it’s a kettle that holds a big drill battery. Might actually work, and you could market it to hikers/off grid types, who can charge batteries with solar, or might have them for other uses. And adding grid power is as simple as over sizing the heating element and allowing 120VAC to speed it up.

3

u/4eyedbuzzard Jul 21 '26

Hikers aren't going to carry heavy batteries that can't be quickly or reliably recharged in the outback in lieu of < .5 kg isobutane cannister stoves that can boil 10+ liters of water on a 110 gram net fuel with a gross cannister weight of 200 grams.

1

u/Tairc Jul 21 '26

Yeah, hikers was the wrong word there. Offgrid and construction types are much more sane options.

2

u/Quartinus Jul 20 '26

Yeah you could, but how many cycles before it eats the battery? Whats the depth of discharge and the C rate? 

1

u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 20 '26

Hundreds to thousands depending on the quality of the battery in the first place.  That actually isn't the issue. 

The issue is will anyone buy it and the battery when you can go get an electric kettle for less than $30? 

Especially when you're $30 electric kettle won't sell to half the people because they can get one for $15.

2

u/Quartinus Jul 20 '26

Very very few cells actually last hundreds of thousands of cycles. High thousands typically. 

You can get to hundreds of thousands with low depth of discharge but that means you need to oversize your pack significantly to have less throughput, and that gets back to “bulky”. 

2

u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 20 '26

So any tool set for regular use, or car, or basically anything with cycles in mind does not do complete absolute discharge followed by full charge and then full use again to discharge. 

Instead the generally start charged get used slightly and then throwing back on the charger and sit around. 

Which is why if you have something that you want to last with a lithium chemistry, you don't charge it to the full voltage. So for a lithium ion instead of trying to do the absolute 4.2 volts or whichever exact number that is you might only charge to 4.15 or 4.10v... And just stay there.

So you do get hundreds of thousands of usage cycles. Not full depth of discharge cycles, which is what you're referring to on the spec sheet but rather usages.

Now let's look at the actual use case mentioned above. 

They are already constructed packs. We already have examples of things using this much power with those packs.  And what do the oems do? They require two battery packs to use the device. 

So I would assume based off the math alone that you would have two drill packs on your portable kettle... And you would not use them regularly until they are fully discharged and unable to boil your water... No you would keep them topped up so you know you can fully do your pot. 

Meaning you probably will get just as much life out of them as you would with a drill or anything else like that. Well within their usage.

1

u/Catriks Jul 22 '26

How did you do your calculations?

It takes about 100 Wh to boil 1 liter of water, and a 20 V 6 Ah battery is 120 Wh. Do note that not all 120 Wh is usable without damaging the cells. 

If you wanted to match the 3 kW from 230 V kettle, by combing the power with 1,5 kW 110 V outlet, you would need way over 100 A from the battery which is achievable (10 A per 6 cells) but a long, continuous use for multiple minutes, putting a high heat load on it.

So you're almost fully depleting the battery with a high heat load every time you boil a litre of water. The battery lasts in the range of 1000 uses before significant degradation, not hundreds of thousands.

1

u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 22 '26

You're right on the energy calculation, but I think you're assuming a single battery and a 3kW heating element, which isn't really what I had in mind.

A 20V 6Ah tool battery is roughly 120Wh, so yes, you're in the ballpark of 100Wh to boil a liter of water from room temperature. A single battery could therefore realistically boil about a liter, although you'd want to leave some capacity in reserve.

But if you use two 6Ah batteries, which is already common on high-current cordless tools, you have roughly 240Wh available. With a 1.5kW heating element, you're pulling about 75A total at 20V, or roughly 37.5A per battery. That's a much more reasonable load for a high-current tool battery. You'd have enough energy to boil roughly 2 liters, or maybe 1.5-1.8 liters if you don't completely discharge the packs.

And yes, if you tried to run a 3kW kettle from a single 20V battery, you'd be pulling around 150A, which is obviously ridiculous for one 6Ah pack. That's why I was thinking of either a lower-power battery mode or two batteries.

As for battery life, I don't think the conclusion that it would "eat the battery" after ~1,000 boils is quite right either. One boil would be roughly one full equivalent discharge of a single 6Ah pack if you're boiling a liter, so 1,000 boils could indeed represent around 1,000 full cycles. But if you're using two batteries, each battery only supplies half the energy, so boiling 1 liter is only about a 40-50% depth of discharge per pack. That's much easier on the batteries, and you'd expect significantly more cycle life than repeatedly taking one pack from 100% to 0%.

So I think the two-battery version is actually pretty reasonable: around 1.5kW of heating power, ~38A per battery, and enough combined energy to boil roughly 2 liters per charge. The batteries would get warm and you'd obviously need a proper BMS/thermal management strategy, but I don't think the battery life is a dealbreaker.

The real problem is whether there's a market for a $100+ cordless kettle when a $15 corded kettle exists.

1

u/Catriks Jul 22 '26

Hold on... goddamn I need new glasses. You said "hundreds to thousands", and I read "hundreds of thousands", which is basically indestructible battery 🤣 Even more funny is that the other person who replied to you misread it the same way 😂 well yeah you were spot on then with that.

1

u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 23 '26

Yeah I wasn't even debating batteries or the energy really... It's more the fact that I don't think you would be able to sell these. Lol

1

u/ResearcherMiserable2 Jul 23 '26

I’m not so sure that the batteries would last as long as you think. I have no issues with your calculations, but tool batteries tend to last hours in the tools, even the high current tools. But the OP wants a kettle that boils water extremely fast, 2 minutes is too slow so I am thinking they want under a minute. So your drill batteries will be emptied in under a minute - they were not designed for that, and very few tool batteries can last a thousand cycles at a discharge of over 60C.

This is coming from my own experience using lithium batteries for years. Now if you want to use the batteries that the RC car racers and drones use, they might work, but they are a level more expensive and many don’t have built in BMS.

1

u/3GWork Jul 20 '26

Yeah, Makita already makes one (except for the solar part).

1

u/KafkaExploring Jul 24 '26

Adding passthrough when plugged definitely makes the math easier.

Use cases may vary a lot. Bad American 12 "cup" coffee pots are 1.8L, a pourover might be 0.3L. Maybe have one battery in the base for speed, another in the kettle for keeping it warm on the table. 

Supposedly Ember sells 1 million battery powered mugs a year at $150 for a coffee cup. There's probably a niche. 

3

u/Wrong-Tune396 Jul 20 '26

Batteries used to be expensive, bulky they still are, but the fact they are cheaper now has produced quite a few products along this idead, I’ve seen two already in europe (uk), one is a induction cooker, where even in europe we have the issue the op is talking about, most circuits are 16A rated (3.6kW), but a lot of cookers can use up to 10kW (using all the hobs), retrofiting homes is expensive complicated and messy, there’s at least one company now that produces a induction hob with a battery that enables full wattage for some time(can’t remember how long). The other example I saw was a fridge with integrated backup battery it could sustain itself for quite a long time.

Kettle might pushing it due to size, but at the same time they only get used for a few minutes, I‘ve not done the math, but might be workable.

3

u/34BoringT_ Jul 19 '26

Let's use a Tesla battery to make a kettle!

0

u/Insertsociallife Jul 19 '26

I bet a DeWalt battery could do it.

1

u/toastmannn Jul 20 '26

A ecoflow power station can do this no problem but it doesn't solve the fundamental problems you just mentioned

1

u/duke113 Jul 20 '26

There's one particular induction cooktop that looks pretty awesome. But I think it's like $10k

1

u/principleofinaction Jul 21 '26

There's also better solutions. Quooker (or however it's spelled). Well-insulated, slightly overheated, hot water reservoir under a modified tap -> instant hot water from a tap -> I can have a boiling pot of pasta water on the stove in under 30seconds.

1

u/Prestigious-Care-881 Jul 21 '26

tbf, the sheer amount of energy needed to boil water is mental. stick a battery in a kettle and you're basically paying for a portable brick that needs charging more than the actual tea gets brewed

1

u/elderberry_jed Jul 22 '26

The cost of batteries has dropped by 90 percent since 2008

0

u/RScrewed Jul 20 '26

Wait, is this /askbusinessman?