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77 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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throw0101c ◴[] No.46079266[source]
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

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maccard ◴[] No.46181012[source]
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/

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jchw ◴[] No.46181153[source]
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.)

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Nextgrid ◴[] No.46181169[source]
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.
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jchw ◴[] No.46181621[source]
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.

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1. dreamcompiler ◴[] No.46184280{5}[source]
The only one I found that was truly battery-powered was the Makita [0]. The $99 Cuisinart I found seems to be a standard electric kettle. Lots of kettles describe themselves as cordless but that does not mean battery-powered; it just means the kettle itself can be removed from a corded base.

I also found a ton of AI-generated link spam pages purporting to be about battery-powered kettles that are all clearly not battery-powered (e.g. [1]). Some of these are 12v powered, but they still contain no batteries. Apparently the adjective cordless confuses AI just like it does people.

Side note: Boiling water takes a lot of energy. You need a big battery; not just a couple of AAs. Any truly battery-powered kettle is going to require a battery at least as big as one for a contractor-grade power tool, and that battery is going to deplete after roughly one boiled pot.

[0] https://www.acmetools.com/makita-40v-max-xgt-hot-water-kettl...

[1] https://activegearreviews.com/best-battery-powered-kettles/