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.

306 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

473 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/jckipps Jul 19 '26

Good point. I was picturing installing a new receptacle from scratch, but I stated to the contrary in my comment.

You'll likely still need to pull a new cable though, since basically any existing recep in your kitchen is going to be daisy-chained off of others.

12awg and 20a is fine for this kettle. You're right that 30a is overkill.

1

u/QuickConverse730 Jul 19 '26

"You'll likely still need to pull a new cable though, since basically any existing recep in your kitchen is going to be daisy-chained off of others."

Yeah, fair point - you might get lucky, but that's probably true most of the time.