An electric kettle is an important appliance in your home as you can boil water for your coffee and even for drinking. While the electric kettle is a high-wattage appliance that consumes a lot of power you don’t need to run it for long periods of time.
A 2000-watt solar generator is enough to run an electric kettle for up to 54 minutes. You only need 4 minutes to bring the water to a boil so you can actually attach other appliances or use it a couple of times (more than 10 times) with an electric kettle.
In this article, we take you through how to choose a solar generator to run high-wattage appliances like an electric kettle and how long you can run them for.
What Size Solar Generator to Power an Electric Kettle
The amount of power an electric kettle uses depends on the size of the kettle and the type of heating element. The bigger the kettle, the more water it can hold and the longer it takes to heat up. The larger the kettle, the more energy it uses, and a heating element that heats up quickly uses less energy than one that takes longer to reach boiling point.
If you want an electric kettle that boils water quickly and then looks for one with high wattage of around 1500 Watts you can opt for a low-wattage kettle but it will take longer.
You’ll need to match the inverter rating of the solar generator to the power rating of the appliance. The Inverter rating should be higher than the power rating of the electric kettle. So for a 1500-watt electric kettle, you’ll need a 2000-watt solar generator.
While the inverter rating determines if the solar generator can run your electric kettle how long and how often you use your kettle will be determined by the capacity or watt-hour rating.
How Long Will a 2000-Watt Solar Generator Run a 1500-Watt Electric Kettle?
When you are determining how much energy a device uses, you must consider the amount of time that it will be used. A Watt-hour is a product of multiplying a device’s wattage by its run time in hours. To calculate Watt-Hours you multiply the Wattage of the device or appliance and multiply by the number of hours you use the device.
Watt-Hours = Watts X Hours
To run a 1500-watt electric kettle for an hour you’ll need 1500-watt hours.
However, you won’t be running the electric kettle for an hour as 4 minutes is enough to bring the water to a boil.
For 4 minutes you’ll need
1500 x (4/60)
= 100 Watt-hours
A 2000-watt solar generator will have a battery 24v 100Ah battery. With a lithium-ion battery, you can pull 100% of the battery in an hour. However, the BMS will be set to around 80% at around 21v operating at a max of 80 amps at a voltage of around 21V. Hence you get a lower watt-hour rating of around 1600 watt-hours.
Running Time = Solar Generator Watt-hours/operating power of the device
For example to get the running time for a 1500-watt electric kettle
= (1600*0.85)/1500
= 0.90 hrs
2000 Watt-hours is enough to run the electric kettle for around 54 minutes. This is enough to use the electric kettle over 18 times.
How Long Will the Solar Generator Last with a Solar Panel?
A 100Ah 24V battery will need 25 amps of DC power to charge. A 600-watt Solar panel can provide 25 amps to charge the battery in around four hours. This will depend on the availability of sunlight. 4 hours of sunlight in an ideal situation should provide 2400Wh enough to recharge the solar generator.
With an extra 25 amps going to the battery, this adds to the capacity of our battery you can now pull more amps from the battery. The extra 600 watts adds to the run time for the electric kettle.
With 600 watts available:
= (600*0.85)/1500
= 0.34 hrs
The electric kettle can now run an additional 20 minutes with the solar generator hooked on the solar panel. This brings the total to 1 hr and 14 minutes. Since you are not running your electric kettle all the time this means you can run several other appliances with the solar generator.
Conclusion
An electric kettle is a high-wattage appliance that uses a lot of power. However, you don’t need that much power to boil your water even for several times a day. A 2000-watt solar generator can provide enough power to run your electric kettle plus other appliances as well in the course of a day or even night.