I was tempted. If 240v kettles or other small appliances were generally available, I would have
Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles?
not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 8 hours agoFive fucking minutes OMFG. Just get a 240V outlet in the kitchen so you can plug in a proper kettle.
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
You can’t. You can’t use European 240V kettles in the US because of phase differences (or something - an electrician told me so and declined the job to give me an outlet even though he accepted and performed other work for me).
No one to my knowledge has marketed a 240V kettle for the US market. It’s a business idea for anyone who wants to pick it up.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
The issue isn’t the voltage. It is the wattage. UK kettles draw 3kW. US outlets are (typically) only rated for 2.4kW. We can easily get dedicated 30A, 120v outlets that will provide 3.6kW.
US 240v is not the same as UK 240v.
The UK uses a single live phase, (240v with respect to ground), and a neutral (0v with respect to ground).
The US uses two live phases. Each phase is 120v with respect to ground, but they are 180 degrees apart from eachother. Phase to phase is 240V, but either phase to ground is 120v.
A UK kettle expects its neutral phase to be at the same potential as ground, which can’t happen in the US without a 1-to-1 transformer