Comment on Why do so many UK electrical sockets have an on/off switch next to them?
Etterra@discuss.online 5 days agoMakes sense, American lie voltage (outlets) are 120V. 240V is considered high voltage and isn’t typically fed into residential units. Plugging anything rated for 120V into a 240V outlet is gonna be a bad time, and is why the outlets for high voltage are shaped differently.
I was gonna guess that the switches were too negate so-called vampire power, which is when a truck’s of electricity flows into appliances that are normally off. IMO that trickle is so negligible in a residence that is 6 effectively irrelevant, but that’s just here in the US. I don’t know anything about foreign electrical systems.
timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
240 is used all the time for furnaces, driers, and increasingly EV outlet connections.
It’s just all our “normal” stuff is 120.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 4 days ago
I wish our electric kettle outlets were 240. I’m unreasonably jealous that other places in the world can boil water faster!
pixelscript@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I think you can have it, but you’t need to spend a pretty penny.
All it would take is calling an electrician to run the appropriate wiring from the place you want the kettle plugged in to you breaker box, connect it to the breaker box with the appropriate breaker, cap off the other end with the appropriate plug (a 240V plug does exist in America), and then buy a kettle capable of receiving the rated current and splice on the appropriate plug (because I presume you won’t find one sold with that plug).
An extremely expensive way to save maybe three minutes boiling water, but you can do it.