alt Hacker NewsIt's the same issue, if you have a higher voltage then you can get more power without increasing current.
For example in Australia a standard house circuit is 10 Amps, but because it's at 240V we can get 2400 Watts (realistically more like 2300) out of a _standard_ wall outlet that is in every room of your house.
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Meanwhile, here in Germany, we have 230V, but every standard wall outlet is rated for 16A continuous load over 1 hour so you can get 3.6 kW on each circuit.
Your standard home has a supply of 3 phase power @ 35A (southern Germany) or 63A (northern and western Germany), I think only the former GDR is at standard 3x25A, because like in many former Communist countries they had to save on expensive copper and aluminium, and since a lot of the GDR was heated by steam-based central district heating systems, you didn't need that much power anyway.
It's not the same issue. The vast majority of kitchens in the US have 20 amp circuits (so 2,400 watts peak, 1,920 watts continuous) exclusively. It's a bog standard receptacle (NEMA 5-20R instead of 5-15R) that's backwards compatible with 15 amp plugs. In fact these days most 5-15R receptacles have identical guts to their 20 amp counterparts save for the additional provision for a horizontal blade.
The electrical code (NEC) has started moving towards requiring 20 amp circuits in other rooms and more 20 amp circuits in kitchens.