I'm passionate enough about having nearly-boiling water available at all times, that when I remodeled my kitchen, I put in tea spigot: a tiny water heater under my sink that keeps water nearly-boiling and ready to dispense at all times, with a little dedicated spigot built into the sink. So now I don't have a kettle on the counter, but only because it's built into the sink.

If I had to guess, it probably gets used 5+ times a day.

http://insideenergy.org/2016/02/23/boiling-water-ieq/

"An electric stovetop is about 70 percent efficient, although that varies widely depending on the type of pot or kettle you use. Most of the energy is lost heating the air around the stove. An electric teakettle is about 80 percent efficient, although again this varies from kettle to kettle. Electric kettles are generally very well insulated, and the heating coils sit directly in the water, so less heat is lost to the air. An induction stove or hot plate is about 85 percent efficient. It creates an electromagnetic current directly in a pot to generate heat, losing very little to the air."

[as a footnote, the above apparently implies that kettles are not necessarily induction, and of course there are stovetops that are induction]

I got to go make a cup of coffee/tea and see how long it takes me.

Edit: I just put my metal, non-electric kettle with 500 mL of cold tap water on a completely cold electric range and the time from turning the dial to Hi to the kettle whistling was 3 minutes +/- about 1 second.

First google hit for "electric kettle test time to boil" is from consumer reports (I assume they are US only):

"The electric kettles bring the water to a boil in about 4 to 5½ minutes"

...then again, I wouldn't have thought it but maybe electric kettles in the UK are faster?

https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/kettles/article/how-we-test-...

"The fastest kettles can boil a litre in less than two minutes and 18 seconds, but we've also tested kettles that take nearly twice as long - leaving you waiting around for your cuppa."

So, my conclusion is an electric kettle might be noticeably faster on a percentage basis, but it reminds me of people who think a car that goes from 0-60 in 2.6 seconds is way higher performance than one that takes 3.6 seconds.

A (good) UK electric kettle will almost invariably have a 3kW flat element (13A at 240V = 3.1kW but you don't want to get too close to the maximum). So that's turning almost 3kJ of electricity into heat every second, which works out to just over 130 seconds = 2 minutes and change to boil the water as the reviewers found.

Edit: Forgot to add, I assumed one litre which is also what Which used in their test. In practice you might boil just 2 cups of water to make a beverage, which will be much faster.

The bottom line for me is that (in the UK where maybe small appliances can draw more) it takes 2-4 minutes, so as a pessimist, I wouldn't count on one that I can buy being faster than 3 minutes.

I suppose I might do another test with 1L since I only used half that. But half a liter is plenty for one cup.

It's possible that my setup works better than most because my kettle is almost a perfect hemisphere that exactly covers a large burner.

I can imagine it being related to 120 volt outlets vs 240 volts, though I don't really know.

In both countries a home will have some beefier power for special purposes. In the UK (unless it's a really big house) this would be different sockets rated for more current at 240 volts or just stuff wired permanently for the higher current. e.g. an electric oven might be 20A at 240V = 4.8kW.

In the US the weird way they get 110V means most homes (except maybe smaller dwellings in a multi-residence building) get 2x opposite 110V supplies so you can do 220V (which may be closer to 250V in some cases, again it varies) by wiring across the two sides to deliver power for an oven or central air conditioning system or other power hungry equipment. Again this is either wired in or uses less common sockets so that you don't plug the wrong stuff in.

> In the US the weird way they get 110V

As a US resident I'm genuinely curious - what do you find weird about how we do the conversion from three phase? Doesn't the UK use three phase for transmission as well? Or is it three pole single phase itself that you find weird?

> uses less common sockets

Three pole single phase outlets are fully standardized in the national codes the same as 15 and 20 amp outlets are (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector). NEMA 5 and 14 (previously 10, deprecated for 15+ years depending on jurisdiction) are the only outlet types I've ever encountered in a home.

Having three phase transmission isn't weird, it's the three pole single phase. There's no reason to do that except it's too late to change it now.

The argued upside seems to be that it makes household electrical systems less dangerous (reduced voltage). But if you care about that you'd design the rest of the system to be less dangerous as they did across Europe. For example, obviously the last few millimetres of the live pins of a plug should be insulated, you don't need them to conduct power and a human might touch them, so insulate them.

The point wasn't that these higher power sockets aren't standard (the NEMA standard is rubbish but it's a standard) but that they are literally less common.