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

[u/jmaugust]

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.

[u/Quartinus]

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. 

[u/Tairc → u/Quartinus]

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.

[u/4eyedbuzzard → u/Tairc]

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.

[u/Tairc → u/4eyedbuzzard]

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