BS 1363 British Plugs and Sockets
plugsocketmuseum.nl
plugsocketmuseum.nl
I've toured continental Europe (France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy), the US, India, and ANZ, and all of their plugs are downgrades in comparison to the icon of engineering that is Type G/BS1363. The former somehow all tend to end up with loose contact, wiggling and sparking, degraded power/current, or a cable that sticks out perpendicular to the wall, or some other annoyance. People argue for the Schuko but it is as large as, if not larger than BS1363 plugs. The earthing setup is odd.
The BS1363 is so massive that it shrugs off power loads of multiple kilowatts—British kettles and toaster ovens run at up to 3 kW or more. One could possibly even charge their EV with BS1363 without needing any automotive cable standard[1].
The BS1363 has a satisfying 'thonk' that no other plug has. It feels like you're powering up some futuristic space craft, not your vacuum cleaner.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricVehiclesUK/comments/1gta12f...
1. Too large and heavy to carry around.
2. Requires grounding (third pin), even when devices don't need it. Other standards let devices decide.
3. Doesn't allow the cord to go straight out of the plug, it always go sideways which makes it even clunkier, harder to plug (e.g. behind a nightstand at a hotel), and more prone to cord damage from bending.
CEE 7/3 and CEE 7/5 (known as "French" and "German") are way better IMHO. I doubt they have problems with "wiggling and sparking" -- that wouldn't pass certification. And it's easy to make a plug to fit both of them, with or without grounding. CEE 7/5 can even be plugged upside down.
2. Better have it than not. Plus, it makes for a single uniform plug design and specification that is straightforwardly adhered to.
3. IMO this is a good thing as it allows furniture to be set up considerably closer to the walls.
Funny you mention hotels, because I was in one in France not two weeks ago and it had the worst sockets I've ever seen. My phones took forever to charge, half the sockets didn't even seem to have power, and they all had this unintuitive setup where there was a spring loaded panel in the socket that needed to be twisted to get the plug in.
Now, I've seen some odd BS1363 setups, but never one this strange.
2. No, there's simply no point in having it for devices that don't need it.
3. My point is Europlugs give you choice, there are plugs that bend and ones that are not, your choice. BS1363 is always bent.
> My phones took forever to charge
Dude, that's not how chargers work. They either charge at full power your charger can, or do not charge at all. Well, unless your charger can supply 2000+ W to your phones, but I've yet to see a phone capable of more that 37 W. Which means one plug can charge _at least_ 50 phones at the same time, maybe even 100. Any plug is _way_ more powerful than USB can deliver.
I generally would agree it is the best plug standard for safety, but clunky and painful to step on..
My worst experience was in a hotel in the US, with the weight of my adapter and plug they just fell out of the socket. Luckily, for once Jesus saved me; the ubiquitous bible in the nightstand drawer was just the right size to prop up the adapter and I was able to charge my laptop!
Never had a problem with Schuko plugs falling out by themselves, FWIW, if anything the springs are often so tight you need two hands to pull it out so you don't wiggle the socket.
Sounds like dust protection and/or "Kindersicherung"(Child safety/protection)
One can get them as an add on, to retrofit 'Schukos'.
https://www.dezeen.com/2012/02/20/folding-plug-by-min-kyu-ch...
In the US and Canada, the electrical codes now require tamper resistant receptacles in most residential settings, to stop children from poking metal objects into them. Because the ground pin is optional on plugs that connect to the standard NEMA 5-15R receptacle, you can't use the ground pin as a keying feature like you can with the BS1363. Instead, there is a mechanism that is supposed to only allow a plug to be inserted when both hot and neutral pins are present. It is probably the worst thing ever designed. Sometimes it works fine, a bit of extra pressure and the plug goes right in. But most of the time, it stubbornly binds up and you're left trying to fiddle with the plug to find the perfect combination of pressure and angle that allows the shutter to open. It can be horrendously frustrating.
After a couple of high-usage outlets got jammed to the point that nothing could be plugged in, I replaced them with ones from the hardware store, and they are a big improvement. The existing outlets are unbranded, and I guess were from a bulk box of the cheapest that the electrician could source.
In my experience, Leviton are OK (much better than what was originally fitted), but Eaton are great -- they require slightly more force than non-TR outlets, but they're consistent, reliable, and I've never had to try more than once to plug anything in.
11 years living in the UK. I don't think even once I thought of it as _minimal resistance_. At best it requires a firm push. At worst, a couple of hammerings with the side of the fist.
Note that I don't mind the ground pin or having things grounded by default. Even if it wasn't more or less essential due to the mind blowing lack of safety of the ring circuit, it's still a nice and cheap enough extra bit of protection.
1. small form factor – BS1363/EU no, US yes
2. grounding not required – BS1363 no, EU/US yes
3. good contact / not much wiggle (in type-I due to angling) – BS1363 yes, US/EU no
4. cable can either be parallel or perpendicular to the wall. You claim this is a failing but having options is good. Having a cable perpendicular to the wall is never an option with BS1363 and not having options is clearly worse (like with grounding) – BS1363/EU no, US yes
5. no risk of plugging in upside down – EU/BS1363 yes (BS because of required grounding), US no (need one pin to be larger which is error prone)
6. wall/female side can be flush – US/BS1363 yes, EU no
There is literally no downside to ANZ plugs imo. You say having required grounding is good but eh, many things don't need it. Even if we do think grounding is necessary, then the best option would still be type-I (because it is smaller then BS1363 and has the parallel/perpendicular options).
Schuko is terrible because needing a cavity in the wall in order to have good contact is a poor design and makes the plugs larger than necessary and I think that is the most important requirement.
They do have a higher current rating than the French and German standards (30A vs. 16A) but even those do support up to 4 kW. Ovens also run at 3 kW or so in France and Germany.
In France even though they're not usually plugged into a standard socket, all the ovens I've used ran on standard single phase current. Houses are almost never wired for 3 phase anyway.
Parent was talking about toaster ovens though, and those are (as far as I know) always plugged to normal sockets.
I think your complaint with them is that they stick out perpendicularly from the wall but IMO this is a good tradeoff.
It means you can fit more plugs in the same wall space, so Swiss wall sockets typically come in groups of 3 instead of 2, and extension strips can fit many plugs without being very large.
Conversely if you need the cable to lie close to the wall you can get hinge adapters to make this work, they are convenient and reliable.
Since I lived in Switzerland I have not had a fuse blow, I don't know how that works. Having the fuses in a standard place in the British plugs is very nice.
I do quite like the compactness and aesthetic of the three-prong plug with three plugs in a typical wall fixture, and the compatibility with the two-prong Europlug is convenient. However, using even one adapter with a foreign plug often obstructs the other two plugs in a three-plug fixture, particularly as the adapter usually isn’t reversible if grounded, which is quite annoying if that’s the only socket in a room.
I guess the UK plug being large enough to subsume most foreign plug adapters is one silver lining of its size.
https://www.workshopshed.com/2024/09/why-do-we-have-fuses-in...
> So this is why there is a need for a fuse, it is there to protect the cable running between the plug and the appliance. The alternative would be to have 32A tolerant cables on every device.
> they make it impossible to use correctly rated MCBs.
It looks like UK is 32A standard but US us 20 or 15A - is that a significant enough difference that the US is safer? 15/20A is still chunky.
UK is 32A @ 220v. A massive difference in wattage.
In the UK we can put a fuse of e.g. 3A in the plug of a device that is suited for the devices expected draw, but if I understand correctly this could be 15A for the same device in the US?
US (and really, everywhere except the UK/Singapore/Malaysia, and I think HK) doesn’t use plug fuses, preferring circuit level protection, because they typically have non-insane circuit power levels.
It does result in more branch circuit wiring (albeit thinner gauge) and breakers though, and saving on copper post WW2 was the primary motivation for UK style ring circuits anyway.
Many houses in the US were 50A/120V (for the whole panel/house!) until the 60’s, because that was a lot of power - 6kw. It wasn’t until electric appliances that it started to change, and the modern 200A split phase panels (typically 22/44kw)didn’t start to become the norm until whole house HVAC became normal. Think 80’s/90’s. A lot of houses still don’t have modern panels.
A single UK ring circuit at 32A@220v is 7kw, or more than enough to run a very beefy welder, and more than a whole house service in the US at the time.
A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.
So you need per-appliance fuses to protect the wiring for appliances and not burn the place down, or run 6 gauge wire everywhere in your appliances too, which would remove any cost savings in material.
My point was that the (up to) 3A UK device gets 3A fuse in the plug in the UK. In the US that device becomes a 6A device but (essentially) gets a 15A fuse in the breaker box, is that the case? Because that seems worse.
A fault in the device blows the plug fuse in the UK. The same fault needs to trip the 15A one in the US.
> A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.
I don’t know what this means. It will trip for currents greater than its rating. Nothing should be melting under its rating.
The rule for electrical systems is that any downstream wiring/circuit that would catch on fire in the event of a fault, needs to have a breaker in the circuit before that point, that will interrupt the circuit before the point it would catch on fire.
In the US, every device is just constructed to be safe up to 15/20amps, which uses a bit more copper but is not really a major problem.
But the current is so much higher in the UK, and that is why the fuses on the plugs, because without the fuses providing a lower cut-off point, at a minimum the wires to a typical lamp or whatever, at least to the point it has a fuse or circuit breaker, would need to safely be able to carry the full 32A/220v load without catching on fire.
Which is a very thick cable. And quite a bit more expensive than the tiny bit of extra copper needed to get to 15/20A from 6A.
Does that make sense? The UK plugs essentially distribute the job of overcurrent protection to every single devices plug, where everywhere else it is more centralized at the (lower capacity) circuit level.
As to if this is better or worse is more a matter of opinion and specific local economics that have changed over time than a resolvable ‘fact’.
A UK device blows its own fuse under these circumstances. The wasted copper in every US appliance cord is just insult to injury.
> The rating on a UK ring circuit breaker is so high that you can literally melt significant quantities of steel without tripping the breaker
That’s fine, as long as everything is rated to that draw and doesn’t melt. If the wires couldn’t handle it then the breaker would be rated lower.
> certainly can turn typical appliance wiring incandescent, also without tripping the breaker.
And that’s where the fuse “shines”!
Seems like the UK method uses less copper and gives finer control in over current scenarios. I don’t see any benefits of the US style.
Notably, pretty much everywhere else in the world also uses similar branch circuit type designs and 220v and their plugs and appliances are also not notably more bulky either.
The difference in wire diameter between say 6amps and 15 amps isn’t that noticeable. 15 and 30 is.
They do take up too much space, and are painful to stand on if you leave one unplugged.
But they are still just really satisfying. Plugs just don't fall out of sockets. They are solid and feel reliable. The safety feature of the longer pin opening the socket for the live wires is good. Always found EU and US style plugs and sockets to be worryingly flimsy and the plugs sometimes dangle a bit out of the socket.
Not "or more" if it's using a BS1363. The absolute max at 230V with a 13 amp fuse is 3kW. The Schuko spec actually goes a bit higher (16amps) though in practice appliances >3kW are rare.
USA plugs have prongs that are so thin they bend. The prongs act as a hinge that lets the plug pivot away from the wall to expose the live prongs! And most USA sockets don't have ground on top to block anything resting over those exposed live prongs.
Apple made a very elegant USB charger with foldable pins. It’s like a fidget spinner, impossible to stop playing with.
Living in North America where the 110 V is standard...
the GBR plug/socket is a lovely standard, my brother-in-law gifted us a UK power bar for travel a few years ago, worked great. [[1]]. Since then, it's become common that wallwarts handle 100-240, so recently I just use physical adapters, and if need be wallwarts with multiple charging ports and/or feed-through mains sockets.
[[1]] use whatever physical adapter to power it -- we know that it's ok for 240 V. Then use whatever adapters to charge. I did have a bagful of physical adapters.
A lot of the round pin wiring was rubber/fabric insulated. The fuzeboard was scary. Tar insulated mains cables.
The oldest part of my sister-in-law's place dates to the 1790's (I know: in America 100 years is a long time; in England 100 miles is a long way) and it has receptacles that are a never-standardized bastard union of NEMA 1-15 and 2-15, which means you can't be quite certain if you've got an ungrounded hot and a neutral for 120v or two hots for 240v. God only knows why they were ever manufactured. I've never looked at their panel, but I assume it's a horror show.
I've seen live cloth-insulated wire in older homes I've lived in, and found a mystery fuse box in a triple-decker in Boston. As far as I know, I've never lived anywhere with live knob and tube, but I've definitely had it abandoned-in-place.
My all-time favorite was the house I had with a five-gang box populated with switches. I don't need to add that the multi-location circuit wired through that box was wired wrong.
The UK plug is easily the worst. It’s three times the size of the Swiss plug. You can literally connect three Swiss appliances in the same place you can connect one UK.
For another example, your standard e26 bulb can have part of the thread exposed. If the neutral and live are swapped, that threaded bit is hooked to live, instead of the proper neutral.
There is no use case touching neutral conductors or neutral connected metal cases. No functionality is lost by having devices be double insulated, and in practice most if not all devices on the UK market are made to also be marketable in countries with non-polar connectors.
I just had my house in Vietnam fitted out with universal sockets that will accept all plugs tyoes. Life changing decision.
If you have, then why was it unplugged? A plug should be plugged in (in which case it is safe) or it is superfluous.
I've managed to struggle through to the age of 54 without treading on one of our thrusting tri-pronged plugs. It is surprisingly easy to avoid stepping on them.
It’s really not that complicated and I’d feel completely comfortable doing it myself today but I understand how that may not be true for everyone so the requirement is probably reasonable.
That said, you're theoretically supposed to do a full set of earth resistance measurements etc. on the new wiring, which is hard if not impossible unless you've got proper electrician's test equipment. But in reality no one does that when DIYing it.
The flat back of most plugs increased the risk of standing on this type of plug. It's similar to the experience of standing on Lego, except it will dig much deeper into your foot, and falling over is better than putting all of your weight on it.
It can be a common occurrence, because using an extension cord or an appliance you don't always need to have plugged in can just be laying around. And kids aren't known for being tidy. If you managed to get past being a clumsy kid and had the self awareness to avoid it, props to you.
European plugs (especially German style) are far superior, and European two pin plugs never fall off sockets. That is only a problem with US plugs.
I'd choose UK plugs over US plugs any day of the week, but I still think EU plugs are 10x better than UK.
I, at least, try and dispose of any non-plastic-coated plugs though.
The reason for a fuse is because of the high current capacity of ring circuits vs branch/radial. The fuse protects the power cable of appliances catching fire as they can’t handle the current available on the circuit .
Ring circuits are a thing due to minimizing copper usage when rebuilding after ww2.
Fuse: I'm not familiar with ring circuits and everything you mentioned, though I was aware it's for fires. Other places (and the UK as well in most apartments I had) have centralized fuse boxes. Is this still needed?
Either way, these are reasons for why things were done the way they were done, but reasons aside, the usability is inferior.
Sadly it carried on for far too long, my house built in the nineties has it.
The wiring system was designed during world war II when there was a copper shortage and someone calculated that it used less to use larger conductors to several sockets than to run smaller individual ones to each socket.
“Just baby proof” means remembering to keep those little plastic covers in place in every outlet. That doesn’t seem like superior usability.
Child protected schuko sockets exist and work just fine. We have them installed in our place and I never had an issue with them. Neither do things fall out, nor can you poke at them with a screwdriver.
One common complaint I get from my newly arrived expat colleagues is that their PC gives them slight electric shocks when they use it. IANAE (I am not an electrician), but I assume that this is because of some capacitor voodoo in the PC's power supply. The problem is cured by grounding the assembly.
The British plug/socket embodies the British ethos: nanny state, 'cannot be too careful' etc. In British parlance it is 'belt and braces'. But yes I agree it may be overkill.
In absolute terms, yes. But in 30 years I have never seen a 2-pins europlug fall from a socket on its own. I still prefer the French plugs with the Earth pin (and I quite like the British one as well), but europlugs are fine and really not comparable to American plugs.
I think India still uses them, too.
(edit) as correctly pointed out in the reply, fuse in brittish plug is because of peculiar way brittish homes are wired. Putting fuse in type F sounds weird.
It sounds like the appliance cord is the driving factor for the fuse.
In reality I don't think it matters, and even on a ring main the MCBs often trip before the device fuses blow these days.
Harder to catch is overheating due to overload or degraded contacts or wires (soviet aluminum wires, oh yeah).
In case of brittish ring circuit, there is added fun case of ring disconnecting in the middle, effectively halving cable cross section
Leave it to the British to shoot themselves in the foot for no reason. Why not Schuko / Europlug? Because we have to have our own standard that's worse, that's why.
Probably because the Brits had electrical appliances before the continent did.
Ring circuits generally way higher in power - and a lot more than a single appliance needs or could handle. Hence the need for a fused plug.
The upside is each socket can take a 13A plug (circa 3kW), whereas a standard US socket maxes out closer to 1.8kW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SCHUKO-Patent.svg
Rather, I think the British decided to iterate (for better and for worse) on their earlier design that looks a lot like BS 1363.
Personally, having lived for an extensive amount of time in places with Schuko ("Europe"), NEMA ("US"), and BS 1363 ("British") plugs/sockets, I will take Schuko any day over the other two. Schuko stays in place, is grounded when it needs to be, is flexible when it comes to how it leads the cord out of the plug/socket, and so on. For all the touting of safety, "no sparks", etc. that we hear about BS 1363, I have never seen it out of a Schuko (NEMAs on the other hand...). Yes, BS 1363 improves upon NEMA, but that is a very low bar.
Also not sure what you mean by "exactly the same". You can get single/double/triple in a variety of designs and colours. It's a socket - how much variation do you need?
"A variety of designs and colors" I only see a very few actually available, even via the internet (when I've looked). But you're probably right. I lived in the U.S. for a while, where variety in receptacles is easily obtainable.
We also utilise 110V devices but that requires a step down transformer. I have one. My big hammer drill runs on 110V.
Fire is not caused by electric current. Fire requires a source of ignition and that's not EMF.
More details please.
All electrical cable/wire is rated for so many amps and a certain temperature: if you mismatch the breaker and the cable ratings then you could allow too much current through, and because of I^2 resistance, a fire could happen.
Do a search for "Ampacity Chart".
Both of these are only used outside domestic settings. (Until recently, 415V for a car charger is becoming more common)
I have a 110V transformer and a 110V rated SDS hammer drill. The idea is that if I manage to hit an electrical cable then I will probably not die, with luck.
We also have three phase which I think is normal in the US, for example and is why ethernet over power line is a bit fraught.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country
I wouldn't assume anything about voltage in much of South America / Africa / Asia. You're going to get a frankenstein NEMA-Schuko-Chinese power outlet that will give you some amount of power for some amount of hours in the day, for a definition of 'some' that no one will be able to specify for you with any great precision and that will vary from town to town.
They are very practical, as they accept any plug
[citation needed]
All domestic mains plugs found in typical residential circuits all over the planet are ≤20A:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Com...
The vast majority of 120V plugs are 15A; if you want 20A it's actually a special case:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#Nomenclature
So there are no "higher currents" used. If you need more power then a higher-voltage NEMA 6 plug, or a two-phase NEMA 14, socket is typically used.
That's much less of a concern in 230V countries.
Fires are generally caused by loose connections with higher resistance getting hot and catching something nearby on fire. The British connection in OP is much less likely to have a loose connection.
Typically the distinction is made between 50 and 60 Hertz, where 60Hz is typically considered safer(though I’m not sure if this is even true).
I am an electrician hence why I am curious.
The problem is that the risk of death is so low for both that people's perceptions are skewed. Everybody has been shocked by their household voltage a bunch of times, so they think it's no big deal. Until it isn't.
So 230V stops it does not sound right. Whether there is any difference in probability I have no clue.
Of course, the trade off is much faster kettles. How many lives is faster tea worth? For the British, clearly the answer is 'yes'. :P
It's pretty much impossible for a US plug to lie with the prongs facing upwards because there's no flat back
No Brit ever used your turn of phrase or trod on an upturned plug. I've managed 54 years without doing it.
US plugs have a habit of working loose ...
Funny you think no Brit has ever stood on one when I've heard it joked about a bunch during my 40 odd years.
Our plugs do have a shape that means they can lie with prongs up due to the flat shape of the plug. Other plugs tend to be cylindrical and hence will always lie horizontally out of habit.
However, look at the size of the things! A US (for example) plug has two thin prongs. A UK plug has three thick prongs with one (earth) longer than the other two. If you actually leave one lying on the floor and it happens to be facing upwards and you step on it then what happens.
Our feet are phenomenally sensitive. We are easily capable of stepping on something nasty and detecting it and reacting by lifting up before any damage is done. That assumes normal walking and not say jumping onto an upturned plug, or being pissed or whatever might impair your senses.
Funny you should use an idiom like "a bunch" and describe yourself as a 40 years old Brit and have a new account. Your accent implies Casterbridge.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
Bonus: "Why Britain Uses Separate Hot and Cold Taps":