Museum of Plugs and Sockets
plugsocketmuseum.nl
plugsocketmuseum.nl
Also, there ought to be a museum of hotel electrics. Weird light switch behaviour, dumb (pre phone charger) socket placement, heating/cooling controls, etc
It is a shame that the mü range by Made In Mind is dying, I have one of their USB2 models and it is rather convenient to pack. They are a tad expensive compared to others though.
The problem with replacing British plugs is that they need fuses because most British houses are wired with ring circuits, instead of radial circuits like the rest of the world. So I don't see them moving to a new standard any time soon.
Both plugs and sockets are very compact, which is a far cry from the emerging standard which is the shuko/europlug which takes twice the space. Almost all new houses are equipped with shuko sockets.
But the sockets here do not have the additional prong to avoid swapping the neutral, so they're effectively just a waste of space.
* at least, we have two sizes for it, a smaller one rated for 8A, and the newer for 16A which we commonly have today.
the compatibility table is not trivial (in particular the europlug is compatible with everithing except the big type L sockets) and while new houses might be to nicer standards, there are a lot of very old houses in italy (i lived in a house from ~1850) and many public spaces use the cheapest sockets they can find so you either get a small type L (accepts also europlugs) a simple schuko (accepts also europlugs and unhearthed small type L) or a big type L (accepts only big type L).
In this regard, long live the "europlug" and the trend switching towards type F sockets.
But I was just lamenting the bulkiness of it in general.
In Italy I have mostly seen (https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Italian1.html) 1,2,4,5, schukos like 17a and when lucky schukos like 9 and 10; I have never seen most of the others.
One probably could force the Europlug into it (looks very close), I haven't tried.
And it could be negotiated up to 100,000 volts for charging cars with a thin cool cable. 100,000 volts is perfectly safe as long as system capacitance is kept tiny, and leakage current constantly measured. In fact, the voltage of the sparks when you take off a fleece jumper are more than that.
The current system is nice and flexible and simple enough to be safe. Extension cords work well when you are plugging in a bunch of usb devices and tv/laptop/console. But you can also use the same outlet for a hair dryer or a mixer. Higher current devices like ovens, showers, and cars need to be treated seperately to prevent unsuitable parts adding a fire risk. Lack of compatability to domestic appliances is a feature.
Well, it kills 1000+ people per year in electrical fires in the USA alone. We would never allow electricity in homes like this if it were invented today.
> Such a system would need a box in the basement and lots of seperate wires to outlets.
Yes. But if high voltages can safely be used, and the system is safe in case a cable gets chafed, then the wires become super thin like headphone wires, and overall, the whole system could be produced cheaper than existing systems which use a lot of copper and plastic.
Fire is eliminated too, because a high tech solution measures power losses at every connection, and as soon as enough is unaccounted for to possibly be heating something up to the point of a fire, it switches off.
The main disadvantage is that every appliance or device needs circuitry to measure power flows. This is mitigated by the fact that voltage is variable - low power devices could simply run off 5 to 20 volts at sub-1-amp and not bother with any fancy measurement. Only high power stuff would need the high voltages and all the safety circuitry.
I suspect the risk of fire very thin wires and AC voltage is fairly low - the wires will burn out before there is much of a fire risk.
Wires typically come out directly from the rear of the plug, making for a not particularly neat plug scenario. I find myself using 90-degree adapters a lot of the time.
Extension bars also often take advantage of the reduced space requirements, meaning that many of the slots can't be used if you're plugging in any wall warts there.
Finally, UK electricity is 13A @ 240V, whereas Swiss electricity - like most of continental Europe - is 10A @ 220V. The gap here is significant when (a) you need to extend a socket because of space constraints, especially in the kitchen, and (b) when you want a fast-boiling kettle. I had to get a new kettle when I moved to Switzerland and it's noticeably slower to boil.
I wonder where you got this idea. Both are 230V. Schulko plugs are 10 or 16 amps (with bigger connectors), 16 A is quite common in my experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEE_7_standard_AC_plugs_and_so...
https://www.leadsdirect.co.uk/knowledge-base/what-is-the-dif...
> EU 230V -10% +6% (i.e. 207.0 V-243.8 V)
> UK 230V -6% +10% (i.e. 216.2 V – 253.0 V)
https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Swiss_3hd.html
Our washing machine uses a T15 plug but the socket can also accept a T12 single phase plug instead.
(As a Brit, I'd also pick the Swiss plug as the best, except that the fuseless design wouldn't be good in the UK because of the 30A ring system described in another comment.)
Shame BS546 ('lighting circuit') sockets aren't (still) more common really. You could (buy a house with them or fit them and) replace plugs on cables of course, but not your USB charger with plug & transformer in a single moulding.
Pretty cool feature.
The real problem is with classic sockets as shown in [1]: these are two-pin (unearthed) sockets that can accept a Schuko plug nonetheless, and are widely used even in residential newbuilds, at least in NL. I think the building code has been updated now, but it's very common here to have entire rooms where the sockets don't even have a third wire in the wall box.
To get really pedantic: you are allowed to put a device that normally requires a safety ground into a non-grounded ('old style') outlet but then that circuit should have ground fault protection installed and conversely, if you have a circuit (such as for instance an oven) that does not have a ground fault protector you must use the ground.
This covers a very large percentage of all normally occurring situations, though of course there will always be tricky ones due to rare combinations of devices and installation details.
If you can play it safe: put ground fault protectors on all of your circuits except where leakage current is too high as a result of the consumers design and limit those to one consumer per circuit (dedicated circuit).
This goes double for 'wet' spaces such as bathrooms, kitchens and so on, ground really is mandatory there from a safety perspective even if the code says it isn't, so if you still have ungrounded sockets in bathroom or kitchen add a ground if there is any reasonable way of doing so.
In bathrooms the ground point can frequently be found behind the bathroom mirror over the sink. And don't be tempted to use the waterline, those are frequently made of plastic nowadays and no longer count as safety ground.
The metal connectors are big, but that feels like quality, but the plugs are not bulky off the wall because of the overall angled design (European plugs actually eat up more space off the wall because they are straight although of course europlugs take much less surface area on the wall), which is good behind furnitures or where space is tight. There is only one sort of plug and it has a well designed earth connector. Plugs include a fuse and it's easily replaceable (this is partly due to the standard use of ring circuits in the UK but I find it a nice feature anyway). They have very good grip and stay in place very well (compare this to europlug...). Sockets have an integrated switch.
British plugs are a quiet success (the other one being postcodes).
In other words, they're solving a very real problem here. And so is the rest of the plug as well.
It seems that most of the continental Europeans that have moved to the UK (myself included) are positively amazed by the details of the UK plug design.
Not only that, also gravity pulling on the cable naturally tends to pull European and North American plugs out of their sockets, whereas this angled design in UK plugs prevents that.
The Schucko plug/socket system is very robust, safe, and well designed.
- the same shutters prevent screwdrivers
- A plug half in isn't an issue because the sockets are recessed (but as an additional measure the Europlug has the half-way isolation like the British plug)
The only real advantage of the British plug over Schuko is the fuse (a debatable feature) and the known polarity (Schuko and Europlug don't differentiate between live and neutral).
Nice features that the Schuko variant has that the British plug is missing:
- Ground connection is exposed in the socket, giving you an obvious way to reliably ground yourself (useful when working with electronics)
- Recessed socket design allows plugs that barely stick out (those are not the norm, but are available for use behind furniture etc)
- You have Schuko for "serious" use (ground wire, high current) and Europlug for things that don't need either, with Europlug fitting in Schuko outlets. This gives extension cords more flexibility, many have a mix of Schuko and Europlug outlets to fit more plugs in the same space.
Could I ask why a fuse is debatable? Seems like quite a basic security feature. There's a good video[0] on the design of UK plugs if you're interested.
In a standard (non-British) home, each room has a separate (10A or 16A) breaker in the breaker panel. That breaker protects the wires from overheating (preventing cable fires), and in more modern instances might protect the human from electric shock with an RCD. Then each device may have an internal (usually self-resetting) fuse to protect itself from failure modes. That fuse is tuned to the device needs, both in how fast it triggers and how much current it allows.
What does a fuse in the cable buy you? It can't reliably protect the device, because the user might replace the cable or replace a blown fuse with one with a different rating. It can't protect wires because it's after the house wiring, a large number of functioning devices overheating your wires is at least as likely as a single malfunctioning device. The only context in which it makes sense it the one Tom Scott mentions: you have a copper shortage, so you put the entire flat or even house on one circuit with one fuse. And because you don't want to cut electricity to everything every time there's a short somewhere you put little fuses everywhere.
It's a good design for the circumstances of post-war Britain, but we aren't living in a copper shortage right now.
Surely it is better to have a lower amp fuse tailored to the device, than a high amperage fuse that's happy to send 3000 watts into your dodgy mobile phone charger without fusing.
Ehh. While I see the logic in the rest of your argument, I don't see how being able to change the fuse means the device on the end of the fuse can not be reliably protected. If anything, being able to adjust the fuse to the needs of the device is even better, e.g. if you go from a high-load bulb to something like an LED. I'm not saying anyone runs around the house checking every fuse in every wire, but this does seem like a consideration you've not really made.
> It can't protect wires because it's after the house wiring
I don't see how it can't protect the wires, could you give an example? If a device with a 13A fuse is drawing over 3120W, the fuse will blow to protect the device itself and the house wiring. Could you elaborate on this, please?
> so you put the entire flat or even house on one circuit with one fuse.
Yeah, and we still use that system today. In most residential houses in Britain, we have a main fuse coming into the house. The rating of the fuse depends on what the house can take, e.g. 60A, 80A, or 100A. The main high amperage circuit in most homes in the UK would be the shower, which needs more than 3000W. Mine is a 6.5kW shower with 32A wiring (and the respective RCD).
I personally think fuses in plugs also serve as a common sense mechanism: if your computer monitor is drawing 13A, there's obviously something wrong. That's where the fuse comes in. It's just another protection.
Without that fuse though, the wire overheats, and you get a fire.
Looking at the fairly new soldering iron plug next to me, with a 3A fuse that wire does not look anywhere near thick enough to qualify for passing 13A.
It also doesn't land with the sharp side up, saving a whole lot of people from accidentally and painfully stepping on it.
I've heard horror stories about American plug sockets. It's just way too easy to shock yourself. And then you have all the other weirdness, like 240V on the grid being stepped down for 120V for appliances. Wouldn't it be easier (and more energy-efficient), to use 240V instead of stepping it down and having to pull more current at the appliance level to make up for the voltage?
This is incorrect in many places. Yes, you will have three phase electrical service pulled right into the distribution panel, but in many places all you will receive is a single phase because only one of the three possible fuses is installed.
If you want three phase hookup you just pay your utility company a small fee, they come out to install the extra two fuses and in some cases they'll upgrade your consumption meter to three phase.
> Three-phase service is ultimately how the US system works, same as Europe; it's just that entire neighbourhoods or streets will run off a single 240 V phase rather than each house getting all three phases (industrial buildings commonly have three-phase service).
In the US plenty of the last leg of the distribution network is single phase, in the EU it is almost everywhere three phase, except for some rural areas in former East block countries. Typically a step down transformer will take the distribution voltage and reduce it to something the residents can use directly, houses are then alternating in which of the three fuses is placed (R/S/T) to ensure relatively even distribution of the load.
Here you see a three phase domestic hookup (for instance because of an electric range):
https://www.superflink.nl/media/wysiwyg/1-of-3-fase-aansluit...
and here a single phase one:
https://www.circuitsonline.net/forum/file/58210/forum-post
In this case the 'S' leg of the transformer is used to power the dwelling.
And no, that particular version of 'split phase' is not +120V and -120V, this is not DC that we are talking about. Europe used to have a lot of that kind of split phase but we 'phased it out' to use a cheap pun.
So now the term single phase is used to indicate what you typically get delivered to your house and we don't further subdivide it. This is good because it means you can run much thinner wire due to reduced current. You do get a bigger whack if you accidentally end up touching the phase or if there is an internal short in an ungrounded device that exposes that phase to the outside (this should never happen). In North America 240 V center tapped off a single drop transformer is the norm for residential delivery.
The former was close enough that you could get away with plugging in US or Japanese devices, but if there was anything synchronous in there you'd be out of luck (50 Hz vs 60 Hz). Then 220V became the standard and now it is all 240.
Interesting tidbit: there was so much inertia from older systems that needed upgrading in this that it took until 2004 until the last of it (the 127->220V change) was finally done.
In the EU the 380V (now nominally 400V) relates to tri-phase, the 240V to the voltage between a phase and ground.
Tri-phase power in the United States is available to residential consumers and very light industry (say a small farm) at a number of different voltages up to 480V.
The 240V in the united states is between two 'lives' that are both 120V and that are usually delivered on a center tapped transformer with the center being the neutral. Adding those two together gives you the 240V, but it all comes from a single phase, it's just a center tapped transformer with a 240V winding as the secondary.
You can easily see this when you look at your typical drop transformer that will take a 10KV low voltage distribution line to domestic voltages, where three phase power is required you'll see three transformers in a bank, one for each phase. A typical residence will have only one because in North America single phase power is the norm for distribution.
https://www.mytpu.org/wp-content/uploads/wires.jpg
Is pretty typical in NA.
So a typical drop will have a distribution neutral and a single distribution phase going in to the transformer and three wires coming back out: L1, N and L2 with L1 and L2 being the outside legs of the winding. In your distribution panel you then add your residential ground.
This is possible, but more likely is a phase-to-phase in a delta configured transformer. In that case there is no ground delivered to the distribution panel, just two phases (or three).
Ahh, thank you! I should have checked that point more thoroughly.
Also the pins can get bent out of alignment fairly easily, which almost never happens with UK plugs.
I'm not sure what you mean about plugging it at a slightly wrong angle, I haven't experienced that (in ~25 years of using Australia plugs).
A two pin plug still plugs into a regular socket, it’s just illegal to produce or sell something without an earth pin if it doesn’t meet safety standards for double insulation.
1. When they introduced the plastic sleeve on phase and neutral pins, it severely weakened the pins of the plug and they can rip off inside the socket. Very very unsafe.
2. The standards are very weak on cheap four way plugboards - the sockets fail over time and have a variety of failure modes, especially fire risk. Buy quality plugboards (although hard to judge as a consumer).
The UK plugs usually have a very clear way to grip them and pull them out of the socket, and yanking them by the cable neither looks nor feels right. Whereas the Europlug ones I have mostly have a very dainty, slight place to grip with your fingers and are often very tight - often they really invite you to pull by the cable itself.
There's a little bit of ambiguity about orientation - sometimes the socket has an extra prong sticking out meaning you have to use the plug the right way up, and sometimes there's none. But it can sometimes happen that you're not sure if you're a few degrees out in aligning the prongs in the plug, or if you're just the wrong way up and the earth prong is in the way. Obviously if you can see the socket this isn't a huge issue, but if you're reaching behind a TV unit, or a desk or a counter etc you're in for a bit of fumbling.
I have a similar feeling around lightswitches - the European ones are large, delicate and a little flimsy and the UK ones are little and compact and feel solid. I think it's not allowed to have the UK switches here, which is a shame otherwise I'd fit out my flat with them :)
update: oh speaking of switches I completely forgot that power sockets generally also have an on/off switch in the UK. I guess it comes down to personal preference but I liked having the extra "off" switch for reasons that I can't quite articulate
I prefer both plugs and switches in Europe. Probably for the same reasons as you - I grew up with them, and they feel right.
It's likely you got a small zap from a filtering capacitor inside the device that had not yet discharged.
Funny comparison of different plugs from a few years ago https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/plug-versus-plug/
Converters are a pain to use, they are always flimsy and there always too few available. It is usually not worth getting UK specific plugs for the short-ish duration of the Erasmus period.
Safety and the increased fire hazard was, in our student-mindset, a small sacrifice for the convenience we got in return.
Amazing. There's a wall socket that accepts any plug, "for shavers only". They know the pain.
I'm talking about #12 here https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/China1.html
- It has a ground pin and
- it is very safe: when the contact is established all conducting parts are already hidden, untouchable by operator's hands.
A simple solution could be: the female plug could have 2 ground holes, this way the male plug would be able to connect in two different orientations. Anyone knows of a plug that has this feature?
I can only speak for the UK system, but that's a feature. While most AC devices will work fine with the polarity reversed, the wires are polar; it's common in many AC systems to have a 'neutral' line that's actually tied to ground at the distribution panel.
This is a safety feature. The circuit design of your devices can't depend on it, because e.g. the EU plugs are symmetrical, but many of them will absolutely be safer to use if the neutral line is neutral.
I'm not aware of any EU device that binds the live or neutral wires in a preferential way that would make the device safer in a particular plug orientation. You are likely violating electrical standards and/or certification if that is the case.
Keep in mind that once upon a time European networks were standardized, and that before then we had many different sets of voltages, such as 110 and dual 110 giving 220V (much like the US single phase system today for higher power consumers).
Your typical setup will contain a ground, a neutral and a live all fed through ground fault protected circuits from the distribution panel, with a string of sockets/hardwired consumers hanging off the same circuit. Each of the sockets in a new installation will export ground, in older electrical installations it is common to just have live and neutral, but the hookup is arbitrary.
So if there is a consumer that is safer with neutral hooked up to a particular pin and live to the other then that consumer is likely not compliant with the electrical code/CE certification. It is common to indicate where to hook up L/N on hardwired consumers but for safety there is no preference.
Used in Europe: https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Schuko1.html
Changing these standards is pretty much impossible by now, although some smaller plug variant holdouts might move to Schuko at some point. Oddly enough, South Korea got Schuko, which makes for a really interesting exception in that region.
If the receptacle had a well defined neutral, then devices might expect it to be neutral.
On the other hand, it makes me despair a bit for the future of technology. Such simple tech! So many basically equivalent solutions! And we'll be stuck with this chaos for how long?
The only prospect I see for unification would be USB-C, which is going from 100W to 240W max, and maybe isn't done growing. But given the delicacy of USB-C connections, that's probably even worse. "Honey, is the TV broken?" "No, the USB-C wall plug just fell out again."
I am considering epoxying the damned thing in!
I did this mainly so the kids would stop boosting the cables and charger. But it has also kept the cables from falling out for months:
https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/1407739561153732608
Incidentally, IEC 60906-1 was designed to be a new global plug standard but almost no countries want to go through the trouble of changing their own standards to adopt it. The Brazilian implementation is also not 100% compatible any more.
Your comment reminded me that as a kid (3-4 years old and even a little older) I used to, in a sort, anthropomorphise a power plug which I used to find very nice-looking and of course that I would play with it. It was driving my dad crazy, for good reasons (I actually did manage to get electrocuted at 3 years old while playing with another plug), but somehow I survived. All this to say, not so tongue in cheek (or only partly), that we should maybe strive to make angry and ugly plugs as much as possible.
The convention, now, seems to be to put the ground pin on top. I am not entirely sure when that became the convention, however, as it seemed to be the other way around when I was a child (with the ground pin on the bottom). I think I was a teenager when I started seeing the sockets installed "upside down."
EDIT: Upon googling, I can find lots of conflicting opinions, but it appears that the electrical code has nothing to say about it. They can be installed in any orientation: ground up, down, or sideways.
Also, wall warts are also required to have all of their weight above the plug in the ground on top orientation. That's never worked well for me.
EDIT:
Is it realy a convention?
I was told so, but after googling, I am beginning to doubt it. It may have been a short lived thing.
One was even in its original box, which showed an illustration of woman ironing using an electric iron powered by a cable hanging from the light fitting.
The UK does have "Economy 7" tariffs which are a much simplified off-peak discount intended primarily for storage heating. The idea is, we provide a meter which knows what time it is, for 7 hours each night (when generally power usage is lower) you are charged less per kWh than the other 21 hours per day.
If you keep a Tokyo schedule but live in Yorkshire then this might work for you, but the primary use case was electric storage heating, during the night cheap electricity heats some bricks in a box, during the day you let the heat out of the box to keep your home warm, next night the bricks are re-heated. It's annoying because weather is hard to predict, if you wake up to an unexpected blizzard, too bad, you will freeze or need to use an "immediate" heating source that's very expensive, alternatively if you predict the blizzard but wake to find it's sunny and mild, now your home is 25°C and you feel like an idiot.
I'm not aware of it ever being the case that some household circuits were charged differently in order to make lighting cheaper and it seems unlikely this would be effective. Electric lighting was a huge winner because it's both more convenient and cheaper to use than gas (or worse oil) lamps so an incentive seems unnecessary.
NEMA L6-30R is a locking 208/240v 30 amp receptacle. L means locking, the 6 means two hots and a ground at 208v or 240v, (240v for 240v split phase and 208v for 208v 3p wye) 30 is amp max amps, R means receptacle.
Twistlocks are also used a lot in Theater lighting, and movie/tv production.
Also, some generators.
But yes, in general, not so common for residential, and only certain commercial tasks.
Cons:
- plugs are more likely to fall out or come loose
- flat things can fall on the blades
Pros:
- it looks like a face! D=
Orienting the ground pin up helps keep the plug secured (think about the moment of rotation of the plug) and if it does come loose, the ground pin prevents something from falling and bridging the hot pins.
NEMA-5-15 gets a bad rap for being "loose" for a few reasons:
- the incorrect orientation (see above)
- the abysmal 1-15 outlet (no ground, even less retention, especially with wall warts)
- travelers staying in hotels with wallowed out receptacles that see daily use and need replacing. It doesn't help that they use the cheap ones with low spring force to begin with
Those infernal bedside lamp outlets are the trifecta of terrible: every hotel seems to have them, they are all cheap 1-15s that were loose when new and only deteriorated over time.
Properly installed NEMA-5-15R outlets of middling-to-good-quality never fall out on their own and feel very secure, even years later.
There's one feature I wish the NEMA non-locking series had: partially insulated contacts. Even just a few mm would help.
What a breath of fresh air!
Cylindrical plugs (phono, barrel/coxial, BNC, Edison screw, banana, etc.) are great because orientation doesn't matter. Also, the 'click' you get from phono or BNC connectors is satisfying. RCA connectors mess up despite being cylindrical because they generally come in twos or threes, so you still have to check which goes where, which defeats the purpose of a round plug.
I live in a place with US style plugs, and I like to travel light. So in my suitcase I keep just one US-EU adapter, and employ the pen lid trick [1] to use it in UK style outlets. US, EU and UK style outlets cover basically 100% of my travel destinations. I can't recommend this trick, but it does work and saves me from carrying a bulky UK adapter.
[1] https://www.spgedwards.com/2012/07/howto-hack-uk-power-socke...
I'm sure many human-lifetimes went into developing and deploying every type of plug and socket there. Could those human lifetimes have been better spent inventing something actually new rather than something pretty much the same as a neighbour was also inventing?