My car charger can boil water really fast [video]

He mentions induction 'hot plates' towards the end, and says that they're limited to the same 1800W and 120V as kettles, but there are "commercial" portable induction stoves that are 220V and can go up to 3500 and 5000W; e.g.:

* https://www.vevor.ca/induction-cooktop-c_10592/vevor-portabl...

* https://www.trueinduction.com/Commercial-Single-Induction-Co...

Just need a NEMA 6 plug (GFCI/AFCI per code as well probably):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#Nomenclature

In the US. In the UK 2200W induction plates are readily available with a standard plug for ~£40, or if you spend a little more you can go to 3kW - [0] which is about the limit of most domestic circuits but is hotter than most gas hobs.

If you _really_ want more than that you can go a little mental and use one with an integrated battery which can push out 10 kW [1]

[0] https://www.nisbets.co.uk/nisbets-essentials-single-zone-ind...

[1] https://www.impulselabs.com/

This begs the question, and I've genuinely thought this before, of why we don't just strap a battery to a kettle and end this silly debate. If it takes 5 minutes to boil a cup of water in a 1000 watt kettle, that's somewhere around 80Wh... I guess it would be kind of expensive, but couldn't you make a pretty fast kettle with some number of high discharge battery cells?

(Well honestly, I guess the real answer is outside of Internet debates most people probably just don't consider 5 minutes to boil a cup of water to be a problem.)

It would turn an inert device that costs a couple bucks to manufacture and has affectively no usage limit into a bomb that costs a couple hundred bucks (due to lack of economy of scale) and is limited by the battery's rated number of cycles. The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.

If people are willing to rewire their homes for kettles, I guess a couple hundred bucks isn't that bad.

> limited by the battery's rated number of cycles

Obviously the battery should be replaceable. (It should be in most electronics, really...)

> The battery's proximity to the heat source wouldn't help.

That doesn't seem like a particularly tricky problem to me. The standard kettle already tries as hard as possible to insulate the heat. If you were really worried it'd be possible to put the battery on a separate power brick instead probably.

...

And I guess I could've solved my own problem by googling it. There are tons of battery kettles on the market, including a 1500W one by Cuisinart and a 2200W (apparently?) unit by Makita. The latter is predictably expensive but the Cuisinart is available for around $100 where I live, which is definitely pricey but seems plausible.

I'm in the midst of a kitchen remodel (in 120V land).

I decided to pull an extra 240V line to the countertop explicitly for a tea kettle, which I have not purchased yet but seem to be available from Amazon UK for ~2x the price of an ordinary US-market kettle.

The most disappointing thing so far is the short list of kettle options that ship from the UK to the US.

Also not sure if I should get a UK receptacle (this would probably offend the bldg inspector, so I might swap post-inspection), or just rewire the kettle itself with a standard US (240V) plug.

FWIW, the extra wire + breaker cost was about $100. I expect to pay another $30 or so for the receptacle or appliance wire, and a bit over $100 for the kettle (and its replacements every few years). Not the least expensive option, but not too bad.

The molded, sealed plug of a UK kettle would fare much better in a wet kitchen environment than an aftermarket plug you'd manually install (moisture can get inside and corrode the terminals and connections).