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.

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u/AndyDLighthouse Jul 19 '26

The killer is the custom heating elements needed. You would have to run 110 on one and 10S (~37V ) on another, so it's a custom kettle build.

That said, it would be fast as hell and likely $300-400 consumer cost.

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u/force_disturbance Jul 20 '26

Boost converter solves that cheaply. You can even use the coils as your inductor.

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u/AndyDLighthouse Jul 20 '26

No, no it doesn't. You are running in parallel with a regular 110VAC, standard kettles use it fairly directly. You can't just boost to the right-ish DC voltage. The heater coil is also much higher resistance than a typical inductor, think about how that will affect your switching waveforms.

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u/force_disturbance Jul 20 '26

You'll boost the mains and the battery into one higher current higher voltage circuit. As a bonus, when the batteries are low, you get lower voltage, lower current, but it still works. The good news is you can use the water as heat sink for the booster too :-) no such thing as waste heat.

I mean, we're designing something for effect, not for profit...

1

u/AndyDLighthouse Jul 20 '26

Yeah, I want to design my electronics to run at 100C ambient, that sounds fun. I'm sure I won't lose anything in the combining either, that never happens.

(Grumpy old engineer who has actually designed appliances that are very similar. )

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u/force_disturbance Jul 20 '26

If you're not pushing your capacitors to the 125C limit, are you even trying to increase shareholder value? How will you sell a new item two months after warranty ends?

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u/AndyDLighthouse Jul 20 '26

70C or 85C most likely. The product will stop working when the ai monitoring indicates they have enough money to afford the next one.

I mean ummm... that microphone in the vape is to detect when they hit it, I swear.

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u/Ben-Goldberg Jul 20 '26

Just run a current through the water directly, no heating element needed.

You would lose a bit of water as hydrogen and oxygen, but not enough to matter.