I'm surprised every time I use our electric kettle powered by one of our powerstations just how much electricity goes into boiling water. I shouldn't be -- resistive loads are one of the least efficient. At least I'm charging off solar and not the grid. Even with the overcast day we're having, I've been getting in the 50-150 range most of the day so far. It'll be recharged by the end of the day.
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@Unlikelylass have you seen the "Human Power Station"? I've never seen a more effective illustration of the relative power consumption of different parts of a home. it's a little dated—incandescent bulbs are no longer much of a concern—but I still found it informative when I learned about it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPxuuB_ZBuk
I wonder if anybody is going to make a heat pump kettle? the recent Technology Connections thing on heat pump water heaters was neat, but I'm guessing it wouldn't work so well as a kettle
@jamey I have not, but that sounds very cool -- I'll see if I can track it down.
@Unlikelylass oh, the YouTube link I shared was to a copy of the "Human Power Station" episode of some British show I'm not otherwise familiar with called "Bang Goes the Theory", and that episode is what I was referring to. They put a house next to a warehouse, filled the warehouse with stationary bikes with hub generators, and wired the house to be powered by the bikes. Being able to measure the power consumption of different things in "number of humans on bikes" was a great way to visualize it, and they had several other tricks throughout the episode.
