I've worked my way through four rice cookers, two different brands, in
as many months. The failure mode is consistent - the cooker cooks the
rice, and then fails when it goes into the mode where it keeps the rice
warm.

In each case, it seems that the temperature sensitive fuse has blown.

I'm in Australia, where the nominal mains voltage is 240V, but I
actually get more like 250V. I'm trying to figure out whether this can
really explain these multiple failures. The warming mode involves having
an extra component in series with the heating element. I speculate that
it is a capacitor, though if it is, its value is less than my multimeter
will measure.

Anyone have any thoughts on whether these things really run so close the
edge in warming mode that a 4% overvoltage can kill them?

Sylvia.