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I was looking at our breaker box a few weeks back and realized that roughly half the circuits in our house are for the kitchen. I think something like 6 separate breakers.

Our stove is on a 40 amp circuit. From my reading, 50 amp is pretty common.

On top of that there is a dedicated 20 amp circuit for our microwave (which broke a few years back and we never replaced)

Plus a dedicated circuit for the garbage disposal / dish washer.

Plus one for the fridge

Plus one or two more for countertop appliances.

It's kind of crazy to think about.




Yeah, it's kind of an under-appreciated fact that the good majority of the total potential and actual power draw of a home is composed of dedicated circuits for kitchen and laundry appliances and the HVAC stack, most of them 240V. The 120V 15 amp circuits servicing outlets in the rest of the rooms don't add up to much, especially now in the LED era.

One thing that bugs me is that there aren't counter-top 240V kitchen outlets. If I ever build my own house I'll put in an extra 240V circuit for the kitchen just so I can have some higher power outlets for electric kettles and such. You can boil water for tea twice as fast with 3 kW as with 1.5 kW, as those smug Brits always like to remind us about. I don't think I'd make much use out of 240V anywhere else (except obviously in the garage for EV charging), but just having a couple outlets in the kitchen would be a godsend.




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