Pretty much every electric stove in Germany runs on tri-phase 380V. The only one I’ve ever seen that doesn’t was in a student dorm.

In EU most new ovens are 240V, partially thanks to the efficiency improvements of hot air ovens.

Still, they used to be 3-phase not long ago so OP is also correct.

A typical german stove uses 11kW for the stove + oven combination. Pretty much every stove/oven combination uses 380V 30A for power nowadays.

e.g. look at pretty much any Miele stove/oven combination.

Are you sure? 11kW is a huge number.

Just checked one random German oven (AEG) that specifies typical usage around 1kw and max at 4.8kW. Electrolux which is known for energy efficiency claims max 3kW for a similar oven.

Maybe stove is responsible for the rest?

For my relatively cheap Ikea stove, each cooking plate of my induction stove uses around 1.5 to 2 kW with "Booster" to 2.5 and 3.5 kW. It's connected to three phases and ground through three separate fuses.

The oven is separate and connected with a standard plug though.

Standard power for 4 "burner" stove is 7.2 kW, and can be hooked up on 2 separate phases or on one with a 32A breaker.

Germany is one of the few countries that do this though probably because it's common to have electric heating for the house. In such cases you can't get too far on 240V (which used to be 220V not long ago). If you go to the south or the east the chances of having 380V in anything but new buildings are low.

> Germany is one of the few countries that do this though probably because it's common to have electric heating for the house.

In Germany, electric heating for the house is very uncommon (in opposite to France, I think) for the reason that in Germany, electricity is rather expensive.

I just happen to live in a city where this is quite common - whole streets where every house with multiple apartments has electric heating (overall not a majority by any means but still common). I was contrasting with other countries where this is not only uncommon, it's basically completely non-existing. Even in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, or Moldova despite having some of the cheapest electricity in Europe. [0]

If I understand correctly from other comments below, Belgium seems to use this form of heating despite having some of the highest prices for electricity [0]. Is that the case?

And yes, it is expensive (for a 2 floor house with electric heating including water, total electricity was in the 3-4K Euros per year range). I assume there's no viable alternative for the particular buildings. Usually the rent is substantially lower for those houses (I lived in houses where the rent was lower than the nebenkosten+electricity for this exact reason).

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

> I just happen to live in a city where this is quite common - whole streets where every house with multiple apartments has electric heating (overall not a majority by any means but still common). I was contrasting with other countries where this is not only uncommon, it's basically completely non-existing.

You extrapolated from "common in my city" to "common in my country", and a fairly large one at that. That isn't contrasting anything; its just plain wrong.

It's only common with old houses built for renting, where the owner doesn't have to pay the energy bill, and where modernization as part of insulating the house and building central heaters isn't feasible or economical eg. historic buildings. The devices are heating at night, and emit heat during the day to save energy costs. Not sure if this model makes much sense today. However, heating with electricity, as inefficient as it is, might actually grow compared to heating with gas or oil because of renewable energy subventions (similar story with e-mobility).

> renewable energy subventions

The word you are looking for is subsidies.

Not every Latin-derived word also works in English. ;)

AFAICT electric heating in houses is not common at all in Germany. It would be ridiculously expensive with local electricity prices. A few households have night storage heaters. A few others have heat pumps.

Electric heating in Germany would be insane. A sure way to get very poor very quickly.

Considering average electricity prices around 0.34€/kWh, that’d be the fastest way to bankruptcy imaginable, beating even the "what’s the fastest way to become a millionaire? be a billionaire and buy an airline" joke.

Most German houses run on "Fernwärme", a district heating system where the cities reuse the leftover heat energy from waste incineration plants or powerplants. Another major heating source is gas. Only a tiny minority in rural regions uses oil, and that’s pretty much it — electricity is pretty much never used at all.

Adding to blattimwind, the average electricity price is 30ct/kWh, not 34, and would be lower if people bothered to switch to cheaper providers: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Artikel/Energie/strompreise... (see chart at the bottom of the page for composition and history of electricity prices)

> Most German houses run on "Fernwärme"

Actually about 50 % of households use gas, about a quarter uses oil and the remaining quarter is Fernwärme, heat pump, solar etc.

France and Belgium also have electric heating in most houses, and electric heating always runs on 240V. It really works just fine.

Direct electric heating typically runs on 240 V, but at least in Northern Europe (Finland, Sweden) electric heating is often a central heating via hot water circulation.

Here it used to be common that there's a rather large water tank (1 cubic meter or even more) that is heated up during night time when electricity was cheaper, and then gives out the warmth during day. This is no longer a feasible use case because night time usage of electricity has gone up and night electricity is not cheaper.

Heat pumps (operating with drilled wells going 100 m deep) have become more common. The pumps take 400V 3-phase.

Air-to-air heat pumps are really common. No new houses are built relying on direct (resistive) heating, at least they have water circulation under floor so you can later upgrade to alternative heat sources.

Exactly. Circulation under floor is good for heat pumps with drilled wells as heat source; there the water is not that hot (often around 40 degrees C after pump.)

Belgium does, in fact, not have electric heating in most houses. The most popular heate sources are gas and oil (diesel, often incorrectly referred to as mazout). Electricity is very expensive in Belgium.

Air source electric heat pumps are on the rise, but it'll be decades before they catch up to gas.

Don't know about France, but in Belgium almost every house is gas or oil heating. Although water/Air heat pump is getting more popular for new buildings.

Also, standard flow heaters for water are tri-phase.

For the Dutch perspective. Dutch grid operators consider 3X25A the default these days, but many older houses are indeed still only 1 phase (eg 1x35A).

There are mainly 2 categories for stoves, but I don’t think a 2 phase option exists: (source: just bought one)

1. ~7.4kW with a double group (4 pins) connection. That gives you 2x16A, but is still only one phase, just split over 2 fuses.

2. 10kW+ with a 3 phase connection (also 4 pins), in this case it actually is using 3 phases.

Dutch prices are regulated. The annual fee for a 3x25A connection is the same as for 1x40A. The next step at my grid operator (3x35A) is much more expensive.

3-phase is better future proof system. Electric stoves, dryers, oven, and soon EV chargers are everywhere.

Actually I think the 2x16A should have a different phase per fuse. Otherwise you hit the max of your phase fuse when you put all 4 (assuming a somewhat standard one) heating plates to the max.

In NL, assuming a somewhat modern setup, you have two sets of fuses: one per phase capped at the phase capacity ( commonly 25A), and then another fuse per group (usually: 16A).

(Source: lives in a recently renovated apartment in NL :) ).

Some older houses (< 1960, mostly early 20th century) have had 2 phase 127v systems in place in the Netherlands (either with or without neutral). They have gradually been replaced by 240v.

Maybe this is the reason people still talk about 2 phase systems.

So, like a mini Japan? What do people do when buying appliances? Are the plugs different? Do you use 127V or 254V for appliances and light bulbs?

I think it’s mostly been phased out by now, the few places (historic city centers) that have it will bridge the 2 phases to get a single phase of 220V. I think 127V equipment hasn’t been sold in like 20+ years

Phased out haha! :-D

Maybe it's my central European perspective that clouds this but the standard setup in Germany/Austria/Switzerland and Northern Italy is three phase power to your house.

Yes, same in Poland, 3 phases is standard (and houses from 70-ties also have 3 phases, not sure if they needed to pay extra for that or not).

And we don't do electric heating.

We do not do electric heating because that would be riddiculously expensive. Most single-family homes still use coal, some newer ones use natural gas.

For me, as a homeshop owner, it's really nice, because I can run pretty much any workshop/industry-grade equipment on standard CEE outlets. And for my own contraptions I have an endless supply of efficient, low cost, low vibration/noise, three phase motors.

Meanwhile American homeshops cannot use high grade equipment or have to use VFDs on each machine or rotary converters to create three phases.

To be picky, it is standard single phase 240V.

Two conductors, phase and neutral (+ ground where needed).

Hot-plate-only electric stoves are two-phase. Electric stoves with integrated oven are usually three-phase.

Not modern stoves. Buy anything from the past few years and it's almost certainly just comes with a 240V plug

Just checked e-shop - most ovenless induction stoves with 4 zones were 7 kW (two phase). Only small portable 2-zone induction hotplates have 240V plug. Regular induction stoves with 4 zones and integrated oven were ~11 kW (3x16 A).

I just checked. ~20% of the hot plate-only stoves with 4+ cooking fields from 2016 or newer consume 8KW+ according to a popular European price comparison site (these are certainly 3-phase). For induction it's about 10%. Almost all of them consume more than 4KW, so should be 2-phase minimum and obviously won't come with a Schuko plug.

Also country-dependent. In Sweden, most modern stoves would be 240V, but with the possibility to connect two (or even three) phases.

I imagine that the same stove models are sold all over Europe, but that in countries where multiple phases are uncommon, the stove would come with a 240V plug already connected (i.e. set up to use a single phase).

Even if the stove is powered by single phase [1], it may not be used with a 240V plug, as these are rated for 16 A. And 3.7 kW limit is enough ony for small portable 2-plate stoves.

[1] which is possible even for full 11 kW stove, if you have 40A single phase power.

Bosch (and I assume Siemens and Neff which are the same company) induction hobs are limited electronically. There is a setting that lets you configure the max power it can draw from 1000W - maximum (7400W for this model):

https://media3.bosch-home.com/Documents/bosch.html?matNumber... see "Basic Settings"

Is there an oven included in that power consumption for a stove? I can set my plates by wattages, and I rarely need more than 1kW for one plate, and never exceed 3.7 for all 4.