[Arn_Thor]

It never occurred to me that the voltage difference between America and Europe/Asia would cause a corresponding differences in watt output given the same amps... But yes indeed, US kettles boil much slower.

Other appliances that require a lot of juice include vacuum cleaners, electric hobs, space heaters, portable ACs/dehumidifiers. So having something trip a living room circuit pulling just 2000 watts would drive me nuts in the long run

[kalleboo]

I live in Japan where we have a paltry 100V. In our apartment it's made by for by having lots of (20A) circuits - 3 for the (small) kitchen alone [which uses gas for the stove anyway]. Total of 14 breakers for a small 3 bedroom + living + kitchen apartment.

In 3 years we've only tripped a breaker once - running a microwave, toaster oven and dishwasher all off the same outlet at once.

[Arn_Thor]

sounds like more amps would fix it, yeah

[klodolph]

You could imagine it driving you nuts, in my experience trips are rare (once every few years?) unless you love space heaters. Electric ranges (hobs?) run on their own dedicated 240V circuit. As a tradeoff, the plugs are small and convenient; I can fit a phone charger in my pocket, plus the phone and cable—true in Europe, but not the UK. I can also get a power strip with 8 outlets and it won’t take up much space.

A couple days ago I tripped a circuit breaker for the first time in many years. It turns out that the refrigerator shares a circuit with the rest of the kitchen, so when I ran a rice cooker and deep fryer off the same circuit, when the compressor turned on it tripped.

[paulfurtado]

Note that many businesses, and some circuits in residential homes, are wired for 20 amps. The sockets that definitely support 20 amps have an additional slot for 20 amp connectors. See: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/El...