On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:37:48 -0000, trader_4 wrote:

On Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 9:23:42 AM UTC-5, Bill Gill wrote:
On 12/29/2018 7:43 AM, William Gothberg wrote:
Shouldn't we have faster microwaves by now giving out a few kW? They
were invented decades ago.
Higher powered microwaves would require higher powered electric
outlets, probably 220VAC (in the USA).

Also it is questionable whether higher powered ovens would be
practical for use. Getting warming times down to a couple of
seconds might not be a good idea. More speed is not always better.

Bill

+1

That about covers it. Not sure how useful more power would be. For example,
last night I was thawing out a tomato sauce in a quart plastic container.
The Panasonic has a defrost mode that uses about 30% power and cycles that.
Even so, after a couple mins you have to check, because the bottom gets
hotter and the plastic can soften or melt. Other things tend to heat unevenly
as well, eg you can have one area starting to spatter, while the other is
lower temp. If you had more power, those issues just become worse.

Only with a small number of things, where you'd just select half power. For example I often put in a large bowl of pasta or veg full of cold water, not covered. That water would easily handle 2kW. ONly packaged food in cheap plastic containers is a problem, and those will already melt in my 800W microwave. I always empty them into a real bowl first.

And for sure the fact that receptacles are 15 or 20 amps limits the practical
upside as well.

13A 240V in the UK, no problem to get 3kW. The USA has those too.

If people had a MW and it trips the breaker when they
use another small appliance, they wouldn't be very happy.

My socket circuit is 30A. More modern houses are 32A. Larger houses have two 32A circuits. At 240V, so enough for about 7kW.