Maybe I should make the obvious reason more explicit. If you have something designed to operate on 120V and plug it into a 240V outlet, there will be safety issues. It might even catch on fire. So the two voltages have to use different outlet and plug shapes for safety reasons. An outlet is not “randomly” going to be one voltage or the other because that would be a terrible idea.
And yes, the 240V outlets are set up for heavy appliances rather than small countertop appliances. Remember, we were talking about washing machines and dishwashers, and the claim that European appliances don’t need to consume hot water because they have 230V circuits. American appliances have 240V circuits and they still consume hot water so that’s not a satisfying explanation.
It’s true that Americans don’t plug electric kettles into a 240V plug. There are a few reasons for that:
* Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. So the tea kettle is usually a lower priority in an American household compared to a British one.
* Stovetop tea kettles and microwaves are both perfectly fine at boiling water. Are they as optimal? Maybe not but it’s not a priority. (Microwaves might be just as fast actually.)
* Electric kettles work totally fine on a 120V circuit anyway. I have one. Is it as fast as it would be on a 240V circuit? No, but it’s not a priority. We probably make up the time difference by having faster dishwashers and washing machines that consume hot water in addition to using 240V power.
Upon inspection, the American Breville kettles are 1/2 the wattage with a 1 liter boil time of 4 minutes at 1500 watts.
The UK versions from the same brand are 3000 watts, but only reduces the boil time by 1 minute.
I'm not sure about efficiency one way or the other, but it's interesting to note that double the power does not yield one half boil time.
Additionally, at this elevation I would estimate my morning coffee, Americano (Italian coffee that requires boiled water), takes less time to make than it would at higher wattage at sea level. I'm only guessing.
I think it comes down to practicality more than either culture's love of tea or coffee.
> I think it comes down to practicality more than either culture's love of tea or coffee.
Yeah, come to think of it a coffee machine is solving a very similar problem to an electric kettle. Whats more, I’ve even used a drip coffee maker as a makeshift electric kettle before. So that was just a dumb argument on my part. Thanks for bailing me out with actual data on the diminishing returns of dumping more power into an electric kettle!
Could this be due to American washers being bigger? I don’t see why American washers would be designed to use more water if less water technology exists.
If water consumption isn't something the customer or government cares about, then the customer will choose on other metrics. Americans aren't generally going to buy a European washing machine that takes an hour longer to clean their clothes.
Europeans are going to look at the energy efficiency sticker that by law must be displayed with the machine, either out of altruism, to reduce the running cost, or because the machine with A must be better than the one with G. See the coloured symbols on [1] and the more detailed information if you click one, showing capacity, water use per cycle and typical annual electricity use.
Walmart's site [2] doesn't show this information anywhere.
Walmart does not sell washers, those are all resellers using the Walmart website as a platform, and almost no on would buy an appliance there.
All the energy usage and other details would be on the website of a retailer that actually sells appliances, like Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Costco/etc.
> A modern European washing machine uses 30-50 litres per wash, vs 75-100 for a modern American one.
Maybe we just have bigger washing machines? You need to control for washer capacity to make a fair comparison here. If you need to do twice as many loads of laundry because you can only fit half as much laundry in each load, you’ve gained nothing. And it’s not like having a bigger washing machine requires every load of laundry to use the full water capacity of the machine even if you only do small loads. On older machines you can set a dial for load size while newer ones have sensors for that.
Uh, you might want to reconsider who you’re talking to. I’ve run 40 amp 240v split phase and 3 phase in North America (permitted) for personal projects. I’m well aware.
No one installs L30R/L6-30R receptacles in the US for ‘normal’ (as in used by a human for random stuff) use as standard practice, because yes - most of the time no one needs it. Maximum power for a normal 120/20 amp branch circuit is 2.4kw, and that’s 7.2kw. The most I’ve ever actually had a use for in a residential building was 50 amp @ 240v (arc gouging), but I did setup 50 amp @ 480v for a massive CNC milling machine once.
And when someone does, it’s a special case.
Most of Europe and Asia, they have receptacles that can handle that kind of load. And many other wiring changes.
But they also don’t really use them to capacity very often either.
But it is convenient to be able to run a decent welder off a normal house outlet in Germany or Singapore if you want.
"Normal" high power portable devices in Europe are 2-3kW electric heaters (generally an expensive way to heat a house, but OK if you're heating a single room) and older and less efficient vacuum cleaners (2kW).
Maybe also a very high spec gaming PC, which here could run (monitors and all) from a single outlet. Would tripping the breaker have been a concern at a 2000s LAN party in the USA? I have no idea.
In some countries it's common to have a 400V (3 phase) socket in the garage. Excellent for car charging, but that is also OK from 230V. That is probably by far the biggest current benefit of 230V everywhere. Charge the car at a decent speed at that holiday cottage in the mountains.
> Uh, you might want to reconsider who you’re talking to. I’ve run 40 amp 240v split phase and 3 phase in North America (permitted) for personal projects. I’m well aware.
Sorry about that, but I’m not sure how you expected me to know that about you or why we’re arguing about tea kettles. I think I inferred more disagreement from context than we actually have. Do we actually disagree about anything here or are we all good? At the very least I think we’re on the same page about washing machines, which was the original point of contention here.
And yes, the point about welding is a good one; higher voltage standards are a lot more convenient for that.
And yes, the 240V outlets are set up for heavy appliances rather than small countertop appliances. Remember, we were talking about washing machines and dishwashers, and the claim that European appliances don’t need to consume hot water because they have 230V circuits. American appliances have 240V circuits and they still consume hot water so that’s not a satisfying explanation.
It’s true that Americans don’t plug electric kettles into a 240V plug. There are a few reasons for that:
* Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. So the tea kettle is usually a lower priority in an American household compared to a British one.
* Stovetop tea kettles and microwaves are both perfectly fine at boiling water. Are they as optimal? Maybe not but it’s not a priority. (Microwaves might be just as fast actually.)
* Electric kettles work totally fine on a 120V circuit anyway. I have one. Is it as fast as it would be on a 240V circuit? No, but it’s not a priority. We probably make up the time difference by having faster dishwashers and washing machines that consume hot water in addition to using 240V power.