Why does my oven take so long to heat up? My modern whirlpool electric oven take forever (about 20min) to heat-up to 200C. This seems similar to  other electric ovens I have used in Ireland. 

Hoever, when visiting my mother in law in the USA, I noticed that her very old(20+ years) electric oven heats up very quickly, about 5 minutes.

Is this rapid heat-up time typical of american ovens or is there something special about hers?

Why does my oven heat-up so slowly in comparison?
There is a large collection or reasons, some are:


Differences in makes and models
Modern form over function problems
Crap EU standards (EN 60350 etc) that limit the amount of power a element can use. It's something like &lt;= 0.25 W per cm2, and a typical domestic over is around 1100 cm2
For same standards the typical total KW/h of modern over is 3.5 KW/h, where ovens of twenty years ago where around 4.5 KW/h\