8 ms·

Perhaps an ignorant question, but given that when I travel I have to bring a seemingly endless array of plug adapters, which power standard is the "best" and ho

Perhaps an ignorant question, but given that when I travel I have to bring a seemingly endless array of plug adapters, which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest?

nateguchi 7y ago
I may be biased, but I think British plugs are great. They have integrated fuses and are switchable too! The sockets have shutters as well to stop children sticking paperclips or forks in and electrocuting themselves. Not great to stand on, however
- danieltillett 7y ago
  They are absolutely massive though.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Also, half the shutters always seem to be stuck shut on public outlets.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      At least failing in a safe mode?
      - ken 7y ago
        Or, depending on your perspective, failing in a way that incentivizes users to jab things in the holes to try to "fix" it. This is another reason I'm a fan of TRUE1: the moving parts are in the plug, not the socket.
- martin-adams 7y ago
  Tom Scott did a wonderful video breaking down the design of the British plug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
- isostatic 7y ago
  The British system (BS1363) is by many measures the best plug/socket system, from automatically shuttering the live wires, to insulated live/neutral to prevent metal objects from shorting on sockets, fuses in the plugs to protect weaker cables, longer wires for Earth than Live if the flex is pulled out. Even 1363 has flaws though -- see the loophole at http://bs1363.fatallyflawed.org.uk/ http://bs1363.fatallyflawed.org.uk/, and of course the counterfits. Every time I use a U.S. plug/socket is scares the bejesus out of me, having grown up with 1363. However it has significant practical drawbacks. Many devices are class 2 and thus down need earthing. A flat two-pronged europlug allows a far higher desnsity socket, and much smaller footprint cables.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Compactness and cost must not part of "many measures" of "best" Edit: Beat me to it on the compactness part.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      No idea about cost, but given they're under £1 each [0] it's not adding a lot. [0] https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/9518-5a-black/uk-mains-plug-black-5a-fuse-fitted/dp/PL10207 https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/9518-5a-black/uk-mains-plug...
- tlarkworthy 7y ago
  Apart from the 240V bit (vs. 120V in most other countries)
  - isthisnametaken 7y ago
    240V (or 230) is the prevailing standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity#/media/File:World_Map_of_Mains_Voltages_and_Frequencies,_Simplified.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity#/media/File:...
    - tlarkworthy 7y ago
      Wow that flipped my world view.
- ken 7y ago
  BS 1363 plug has some neat safety features, but it's really big. Look at the size of a British power strip, for example. As Tom Scott observes, to get the full benefit of the safety features, they would need to make them even bigger. It's also not even close to round, so pulling it out of a nest of cables looks terrible. I'm not convinced that a fuse belongs in a plug, either, especially if it's invisible, and the plug has to be completely disassembled with a screwdriver to access it. Put the fuse in the device, which certainly has much more space for it, and probably a mechanism to make it easy to access. As far as the physical structure goes, BS 1363 looks like it was designed in the 1940's ... because it was designed in the 1940's. I'd much rather have something modern and ergonomic like TRUE1. It's small and round, it locks, it's basically impossible to shock yourself with it, and it's IP rated. I'm not alone here. There's many videos on YouTube of people hacking the Edison plugs off their power tools to replace them with powerCON or TRUE1, but I have yet to find anyone in the world who wants to replace their Edison plug with BS 1363!
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    >I'm not convinced that a fuse belongs in a plug, either, especially if it's invisible, and the plug has to be completely disassembled with a screwdriver to access it. Moulded plugs generally use a clip-in fuseholder that can be opened with any pointed object; rewireable plugs can be opened to replace the fuse by loosening one captive combination Philips/flat screw. It's usually far easier than replacing a fuse in the appliance, which is often on a PCB-mounted holder buried within the guts of the appliance.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    The fuse is located in the plug, rather than the device, because one of the most likely ways to be exposed to live wire is a damaged/frayed power lead. If the fuse is located in the device, it does not protect the upstream part of the system.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  New construction in the US will (or already has, depending on your state) require receptacles with shutters as well: https://www.esfi.org/resource/what-is-a-tamper-resistant-receptacle-538 https://www.esfi.org/resource/what-is-a-tamper-resistant-rec...
- stordoff 7y ago
  > Not great to stand on, however Only plugs that double as caltrops, if necessary. I like to think that it's a feature :)
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  North American receptacles have tamper resistant shutters now too.
mikestew 7y ago
I just got through adding outlets and lights in the garage this weekend, but I’m otherwise kind of a dumbass about such things. Should I have to choose, though, I’d go 240V at 60hz. 240V so my coffee water heats faster than the 120V we get in the US, 60hz just because you gotta choose a number, and 60hz makes for good wall clocks.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 7y ago
  Volts make no difference to heating your coffee. That is all about watts which is mathematically volts times amps. Lower voltage, higher amps for the same time to heat your coffee.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    The higher amps trips the circuit breaker. If you don’t think a difference in voltage determines one’s tea water heating time, check the wattage rating on a kettle sold in the US (120V) and one from the UK (240V).
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    In practice, you run up against the current limitation of your home's wiring.
  - count 7y ago
    V*A means you can vary V or A and get a higher wattage. So, you contradict yourself :)
    - bluGill 7y ago
      W can be constant, in which case there is no contradiction. Of course then V=IR means I need to change R as well. However this is all math. You can choose to hold any one factor constant and change the others to fix your needs. In the real world V is a constant outside your control (120 in the US, 220 elsewhere), and A is limited by local wiring conventions (which means realistically the amount of watts you can get is different - but this is not a factor of voltage). The only factor you can change is R, which turns out to be easy enough (in this application).
Gracana 7y ago
I like IEC 60309 best. 480V 30A three phase IP68/69k rated plugs and sockets? No problem with pin-and-sleeve connectors. Any food processing plant you go to will be full of them. Probably not a great choice for a table lamp, though.
- dfox 7y ago
  There is IEC60309 socket for "small" devices (230V 16A). Typically found on (european) RVs and in datacenters.
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    Why not 60906-1? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1
mschaef 7y ago
> which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest? Not sure what's 'best', but getting rid of the 'rest' is likely to be expensive in terms of capital investment and for a comparatively minimal benefit. To put it from a US perspective, I have a house built in 1940, and while most of it's been rewired to more modern standards, there are still a number of places where it has the original 80 year old wiring. What this means is that I have devices I can't plug into all sockets in the house, and even this inconvenience hasn't been worth the thousands of dollars and personal disruption it would cost to upgrade those circuits. There are cheaper workarounds and more pressing uses for the time and money it would take to make the change. It's this sort of reasoning that makes me hesitant to think that a unified global power standard is ever likely to happen, and that's even before considering some of of the infrastructure costs of making a change. That said, modern flexible power supplies and dual voltage appliances seem like they go at least a large chunk of the way to make the situation at least a little better.
gsich 7y ago
Europlug and the (spiritual) advancement in the form of the Swiss SEV 1011 plug. You can fit about 3 Swiss plugs in the same space a Schuko uses.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > Europlug and the (spiritual) advancement in the form of the Swiss SEV 1011 plug. Europlug has no protective ground wire.
  - gsich 7y ago
    Yes. But the swiss one has it and uses similar dimensions.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  Well, if you take the "type L" (the Swiss is similar but has the ground off-center), it is exactly 3. It is starting to have some success here in Italy this new kind of socket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Italian_multiple_standard_sockets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Ita... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#/media/File:4box_side_4B.AM.H21_28-14.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#/me... https://www.wikiwand.com/it/Spina_elettrica https://www.wikiwand.com/it/Spina_elettrica Where you can put either three Europlugs or 1 Europlug + 2 of either S11 or S17 OR a single Schuko (and it fits in 2 modules, like a "normal" schuko or schuko multistandard)
gwbas1c 7y ago
As far as I know, there's no advantages between 50 and 60 hz. I suspect the difference was political, but maybe someone else knows more about it than me? As far as voltage is concerned, there's a very good reason why most of the world uses about 240 volts for "normal" outlets. The American 120 volt system is fine for things like TVs, clocks, computers, ect, but it's horrible for things like space heaters and electric cars. When I see videos from countries with higher voltages, I see much larger space heaters than we can handle on our outlets. Also, electric cars charge twice as fast from an ordinary European outlet than a normal American outlet. The cost of copper even starts to make high voltages look better. In my house I have extremely thick (expensive) wires running to my heat pump, but if I had higher voltages these wires could be smaller (and cheaper.)
- klodolph 7y ago
  Transformers for 60 Hz are smaller and cheaper than transformers for 50 Hz. In general this continues to be true as you increase the frequency, although there are some effects that you need to compensate for as the frequency increases. Your phone charger might have a transformer operating at something like 1 MHz. As a result, it can be made very, very small.
  - alex_young 7y ago
    There's also a very nice property of 60 hz: Your clocks don't lose their time very often since they have a very predictable source of truth built right in.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Relying on network frequency as being accurate to any degree is madness. It's not even useful for any correction. Even the most basic RC oscillator outperforms it by orders of magnitude.
      - garaetjjte 7y ago
        At least for Europe, it is accurate. Frequency is actively changed to maintain 50Hz in long term: https://www.mainsfrequency.com/gridtime.php https://www.mainsfrequency.com/gridtime.php
Aardwolf 7y ago
I like the Swiss ones, because they get the three prongs in a more compact design than the bigger European round plugs, and are easier to pull from the socket than the harder force needed to pull European ones. They Swiss 3-prong plug is as large as the European 2-prong one. In a wall outlet the size of a European single socket (outlet?), the Swiss one gets three sockets. The UK one is supposedly safer, but it's enormous...
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  The difference is 6A vs 16A rating. That's a big one. Many devices cannot be safely operated off the compact Swiss plug.
chx 7y ago
Higher voltage allows for lower amperage for given watts / more wattage at a given amper limit. The higher the amperage, the larger the wires need to be to avoid excess heat. In the US, standard household circuits are rated for 15 or 20 amps, in the EU 10 and 16 are common. So, you can expect a 3.5kW AC unit to work without problems in the EU while getting anything more than 2kW in North America is a serious headache.
stevekemp 7y ago
Why Britain has the best wall sockets on earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q Sure there is bias there, but the reasoning is pretty compelling. Of course getting any country to switch is nigh-on impossible.
KozmoNau7 7y ago
I'm a big fan of Schuko plugs/sockets. Not gigantic like the UK plug, and the sockets grip the plugs really well, plus there are two ground contacts for redundancy.
faissaloo 7y ago
>how do we get rid of the rest? It's simple, you just refuse to produce anything with an alternative standard, perhaps even banning the export of other standards citing safety concerns, then as more countries find themselves using largely your products with adapters they will eventually realise it's easier to adopt it and use adapters for their native legacy standard.

Perhaps an ignorant question, but given that when I travel I have to bring a seemingly endless array of plug adapters, which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest?

nateguchi 7y ago

I may be biased, but I think British plugs are great. They have integrated fuses and are switchable too! The sockets have shutters as well to stop children sticking paperclips or forks in and electrocuting themselves. Not great to stand on, however

danieltillett 7y ago
They are absolutely massive though.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Also, half the shutters always seem to be stuck shut on public outlets.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    At least failing in a safe mode?
    - ken 7y ago
      Or, depending on your perspective, failing in a way that incentivizes users to jab things in the holes to try to "fix" it. This is another reason I'm a fan of TRUE1: the moving parts are in the plug, not the socket.
martin-adams 7y ago
Tom Scott did a wonderful video breaking down the design of the British plug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
isostatic 7y ago
The British system (BS1363) is by many measures the best plug/socket system, from automatically shuttering the live wires, to insulated live/neutral to prevent metal objects from shorting on sockets, fuses in the plugs to protect weaker cables, longer wires for Earth than Live if the flex is pulled out. Even 1363 has flaws though -- see the loophole at http://bs1363.fatallyflawed.org.uk/ http://bs1363.fatallyflawed.org.uk/, and of course the counterfits. Every time I use a U.S. plug/socket is scares the bejesus out of me, having grown up with 1363. However it has significant practical drawbacks. Many devices are class 2 and thus down need earthing. A flat two-pronged europlug allows a far higher desnsity socket, and much smaller footprint cables.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Compactness and cost must not part of "many measures" of "best" Edit: Beat me to it on the compactness part.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    No idea about cost, but given they're under £1 each [0] it's not adding a lot. [0] https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/9518-5a-black/uk-mains-plug-black-5a-fuse-fitted/dp/PL10207 https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/9518-5a-black/uk-mains-plug...
tlarkworthy 7y ago
Apart from the 240V bit (vs. 120V in most other countries)
- isthisnametaken 7y ago
  240V (or 230) is the prevailing standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity#/media/File:World_Map_of_Mains_Voltages_and_Frequencies,_Simplified.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity#/media/File:...
  - tlarkworthy 7y ago
    Wow that flipped my world view.
ken 7y ago
BS 1363 plug has some neat safety features, but it's really big. Look at the size of a British power strip, for example. As Tom Scott observes, to get the full benefit of the safety features, they would need to make them even bigger. It's also not even close to round, so pulling it out of a nest of cables looks terrible. I'm not convinced that a fuse belongs in a plug, either, especially if it's invisible, and the plug has to be completely disassembled with a screwdriver to access it. Put the fuse in the device, which certainly has much more space for it, and probably a mechanism to make it easy to access. As far as the physical structure goes, BS 1363 looks like it was designed in the 1940's ... because it was designed in the 1940's. I'd much rather have something modern and ergonomic like TRUE1. It's small and round, it locks, it's basically impossible to shock yourself with it, and it's IP rated. I'm not alone here. There's many videos on YouTube of people hacking the Edison plugs off their power tools to replace them with powerCON or TRUE1, but I have yet to find anyone in the world who wants to replace their Edison plug with BS 1363!
- jdietrich 7y ago
  >I'm not convinced that a fuse belongs in a plug, either, especially if it's invisible, and the plug has to be completely disassembled with a screwdriver to access it. Moulded plugs generally use a clip-in fuseholder that can be opened with any pointed object; rewireable plugs can be opened to replace the fuse by loosening one captive combination Philips/flat screw. It's usually far easier than replacing a fuse in the appliance, which is often on a PCB-mounted holder buried within the guts of the appliance.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  The fuse is located in the plug, rather than the device, because one of the most likely ways to be exposed to live wire is a damaged/frayed power lead. If the fuse is located in the device, it does not protect the upstream part of the system.
aidenn0 7y ago
New construction in the US will (or already has, depending on your state) require receptacles with shutters as well: https://www.esfi.org/resource/what-is-a-tamper-resistant-receptacle-538 https://www.esfi.org/resource/what-is-a-tamper-resistant-rec...
stordoff 7y ago
> Not great to stand on, however Only plugs that double as caltrops, if necessary. I like to think that it's a feature :)
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
North American receptacles have tamper resistant shutters now too.

mikestew 7y ago

I just got through adding outlets and lights in the garage this weekend, but I’m otherwise kind of a dumbass about such things. Should I have to choose, though, I’d go 240V at 60hz. 240V so my coffee water heats faster than the 120V we get in the US, 60hz just because you gotta choose a number, and 60hz makes for good wall clocks.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bluGill 7y ago
Volts make no difference to heating your coffee. That is all about watts which is mathematically volts times amps. Lower voltage, higher amps for the same time to heat your coffee.
- mikestew 7y ago
  The higher amps trips the circuit breaker. If you don’t think a difference in voltage determines one’s tea water heating time, check the wattage rating on a kettle sold in the US (120V) and one from the UK (240V).
- mannykannot 7y ago
  In practice, you run up against the current limitation of your home's wiring.
- count 7y ago
  V*A means you can vary V or A and get a higher wattage. So, you contradict yourself :)
  - bluGill 7y ago
    W can be constant, in which case there is no contradiction. Of course then V=IR means I need to change R as well. However this is all math. You can choose to hold any one factor constant and change the others to fix your needs. In the real world V is a constant outside your control (120 in the US, 220 elsewhere), and A is limited by local wiring conventions (which means realistically the amount of watts you can get is different - but this is not a factor of voltage). The only factor you can change is R, which turns out to be easy enough (in this application).

Gracana 7y ago

I like IEC 60309 best. 480V 30A three phase IP68/69k rated plugs and sockets? No problem with pin-and-sleeve connectors. Any food processing plant you go to will be full of them. Probably not a great choice for a table lamp, though.

dfox 7y ago
There is IEC60309 socket for "small" devices (230V 16A). Typically found on (european) RVs and in datacenters.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  Why not 60906-1? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60906-1

mschaef 7y ago

> which power standard is the "best" and how do we get rid of the rest? Not sure what's 'best', but getting rid of the 'rest' is likely to be expensive in terms of capital investment and for a comparatively minimal benefit. To put it from a US perspective, I have a house built in 1940, and while most of it's been rewired to more modern standards, there are still a number of places where it has the original 80 year old wiring. What this means is that I have devices I can't plug into all sockets in the house, and even this inconvenience hasn't been worth the thousands of dollars and personal disruption it would cost to upgrade those circuits. There are cheaper workarounds and more pressing uses for the time and money it would take to make the change. It's this sort of reasoning that makes me hesitant to think that a unified global power standard is ever likely to happen, and that's even before considering some of of the infrastructure costs of making a change. That said, modern flexible power supplies and dual voltage appliances seem like they go at least a large chunk of the way to make the situation at least a little better.

gsich 7y ago

Europlug and the (spiritual) advancement in the form of the Swiss SEV 1011 plug. You can fit about 3 Swiss plugs in the same space a Schuko uses.

wolfgke 7y ago
> Europlug and the (spiritual) advancement in the form of the Swiss SEV 1011 plug. Europlug has no protective ground wire.
- gsich 7y ago
  Yes. But the swiss one has it and uses similar dimensions.
jaclaz 7y ago
Well, if you take the "type L" (the Swiss is similar but has the ground off-center), it is exactly 3. It is starting to have some success here in Italy this new kind of socket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Italian_multiple_standard_sockets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Ita... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#/media/File:4box_side_4B.AM.H21_28-14.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#/me... https://www.wikiwand.com/it/Spina_elettrica https://www.wikiwand.com/it/Spina_elettrica Where you can put either three Europlugs or 1 Europlug + 2 of either S11 or S17 OR a single Schuko (and it fits in 2 modules, like a "normal" schuko or schuko multistandard)

gwbas1c 7y ago

As far as I know, there's no advantages between 50 and 60 hz. I suspect the difference was political, but maybe someone else knows more about it than me? As far as voltage is concerned, there's a very good reason why most of the world uses about 240 volts for "normal" outlets. The American 120 volt system is fine for things like TVs, clocks, computers, ect, but it's horrible for things like space heaters and electric cars. When I see videos from countries with higher voltages, I see much larger space heaters than we can handle on our outlets. Also, electric cars charge twice as fast from an ordinary European outlet than a normal American outlet. The cost of copper even starts to make high voltages look better. In my house I have extremely thick (expensive) wires running to my heat pump, but if I had higher voltages these wires could be smaller (and cheaper.)

klodolph 7y ago
Transformers for 60 Hz are smaller and cheaper than transformers for 50 Hz. In general this continues to be true as you increase the frequency, although there are some effects that you need to compensate for as the frequency increases. Your phone charger might have a transformer operating at something like 1 MHz. As a result, it can be made very, very small.
- alex_young 7y ago
  There's also a very nice property of 60 hz: Your clocks don't lose their time very often since they have a very predictable source of truth built right in.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Relying on network frequency as being accurate to any degree is madness. It's not even useful for any correction. Even the most basic RC oscillator outperforms it by orders of magnitude.
    - garaetjjte 7y ago
      At least for Europe, it is accurate. Frequency is actively changed to maintain 50Hz in long term: https://www.mainsfrequency.com/gridtime.php https://www.mainsfrequency.com/gridtime.php

Aardwolf 7y ago

I like the Swiss ones, because they get the three prongs in a more compact design than the bigger European round plugs, and are easier to pull from the socket than the harder force needed to pull European ones. They Swiss 3-prong plug is as large as the European 2-prong one. In a wall outlet the size of a European single socket (outlet?), the Swiss one gets three sockets. The UK one is supposedly safer, but it's enormous...

AstralStorm 7y ago
The difference is 6A vs 16A rating. That's a big one. Many devices cannot be safely operated off the compact Swiss plug.

chx 7y ago

Higher voltage allows for lower amperage for given watts / more wattage at a given amper limit. The higher the amperage, the larger the wires need to be to avoid excess heat. In the US, standard household circuits are rated for 15 or 20 amps, in the EU 10 and 16 are common. So, you can expect a 3.5kW AC unit to work without problems in the EU while getting anything more than 2kW in North America is a serious headache.

stevekemp 7y ago

Why Britain has the best wall sockets on earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q Sure there is bias there, but the reasoning is pretty compelling. Of course getting any country to switch is nigh-on impossible.

KozmoNau7 7y ago

I'm a big fan of Schuko plugs/sockets. Not gigantic like the UK plug, and the sockets grip the plugs really well, plus there are two ground contacts for redundancy.

faissaloo 7y ago

>how do we get rid of the rest? It's simple, you just refuse to produce anything with an alternative standard, perhaps even banning the export of other standards citing safety concerns, then as more countries find themselves using largely your products with adapters they will eventually realise it's easier to adopt it and use adapters for their native legacy standard.