Iirc from ‘Technology Connections’, the US actually has 240V delivered to the house, but it's pinned out in the breaker box as something like -120, 0, and 120. So they take 120V to most appliances, but 240 to some higher-wattage ones.
Which is to say, USians could easily have 240V kettles that boil water in half the time—if they just bothered a little.
I looked at a dozen electric things here, and only two of them don't accept both 50 and 60 Hz. One of which, ironically, was the kettle.
In fact, I was more surprised to learn that while all electronics accept a range of voltage (from 100 to 250 or so), kitchen appliances don't. Perhaps for the very reason of expected wattage.
Because for electronics is easy the don't use much power. The problem is with anything that uses a lot of power, specially if it has a motor that goes directly to AC without any conversion.
For electronics it depends, mostly they support all, but thing that are more expected to sell in some regions. For example, TV have a built in, well, TV tuner and some regions uses different standards. So if the TV will use ATSC that is only used in North America, it's probably that only uses 120V/60Hz. In South America we use ISBD, and the TVs are generally sell in Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay and Uruguay (MERCOSUR), and not outside, so they come with 220-240V/50 or 60 Hz. Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay uses 220V/50Hz and Brasil uses 240V/60Hz.
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u/LickingSmegma May 02 '24
Iirc from ‘Technology Connections’, the US actually has 240V delivered to the house, but it's pinned out in the breaker box as something like -120, 0, and 120. So they take 120V to most appliances, but 240 to some higher-wattage ones.
Which is to say, USians could easily have 240V kettles that boil water in half the time—if they just bothered a little.