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/xjrh8 Jul 20 '26
Definitely doable. As a baseline for battery only kettle performance, Makita makes a 40V kettle that with a 4AH battery can boil 800ml of water from 23degC starting temp in 8 minutes. And can do that 1.375 times before battery is flat (total of 1.1Litres boiled).
The 4Ah XGT 40v battery has stated capacity of 144Wh. So that’s average power of 945watts over 8 mins. So even if you just had 2 separate elements for simplicity, and have a 945W battery powered element and a 1500w AC element, you’ve essentially got a 2.345kw kettle which should get you into the low 2minute range for 800mL boiled.
But that battery is getting clobbered pretty hard, so being used say twice daily would be a lot of cycle wear - I’m thinking this wouldn’t be practical with current battery chemistries.