Why would I want a whole circuit to be cut because of a single device fault, and then have to spend time figuring out which device on that circuit actually has the fault.
Plus if a device only needs 3A it shouldn't be able to draw more
Why would I want a whole circuit to be cut because of a single device fault
Dunno, if I have a fault in my home, I want it to be spectacular.
A couple of years ago I literally had massive blood pressure and walked like 2 km to go buy a box of fuses.
Burning two fuses, I figured out one of the extension strips was bad.
If I plug something in and half of my apartment goes black, TWICE, and needs a fuse replacement each time, maybe that thing needs to be tossed anuway. I'm no electrician, I can't troubleshoot a power strip. It has served its years. Bye.
Can’t rotate type G 180°. And since type F sockets are recessed, it’s just as unlikely to get shocked as with type G. Ground even connects first. And it’s directly compatible with type C and most type E plugs (since E&F usually share the same plug design, just the socket is a little different). What advantage would type G have to F?
That’s neat. I can remember maybe one or two instances in my life, where that could have been useful. The rest of the time, I much prefer smaller plugs that I can plug in upside down and a home electrical network with good wiring.
Which are only necessary because British houses are wired with a ring main. It’s a false economy.
Also, when it was created, most appliances were earthed. Nowadays, most things one plugs in are small electronic devices which don’t need an earth. Type G/BS1363 has no 2-pin variant, and even mandates a mechanical shutter to prevent a plug without an earth pin from being used. Which was great in 1947, but not so much now, when Europeans, Americans, Japanese, Australians and such have slender 2-pin plugs and economical sockets to put them in, while the Brits/Irish/HK/UAE are stuck with their enormous clownshoe of a plug.
I would have thought two pin plugs are easily to break. I’ve not broken a British plug in 40 years of life.
Anyway I’m not trying to debate this. There are plenty of resources online where electricians discuss the different plug types and the order is typically UK, Germany, and Australia.
What I'd like to see is apples-to-apples comparison of home and office safety between the different plug types. The data is sorta out there, but it's not normalized in a way that's convenient for comparison between countries.
On paper, yes, the North American plug is pretty bad, but will that show up in actual practice? There may be a case for changing it, but that needs a comprehensive study before going to all the effort to transition to a better design. Even if we had that study right in front of us, I can already hear conservatives complaining about Marxists electrical plugs.
In terms of physics, AC doesn't have polarities. Treat both the live and the neutral wire as if it were live. You don't know what kind of psychopath wired the building.
What's great is that it's also "backwards-compatible" with type E. Male type E plugs will usually also have ground connections for a type F, so you can plug it into female E and F sockets.
Edit: In fact, looking back at the picture, that's exactly the kind of male plug shown for both type E and F. It works with both types. It has the hole for an earth prong, but it also has a contact on the bottom side if you look closely.
I will say the comparability is amazing and a really good thing! The type f plugs are amazing. Nothing bad about more ground connections!
Just wished the type f sockets had a solid piece of metal, instead of the springs.
Then they'd be perfect! :D
Schuko (type F) is better than the UK plug. UK plug is huge, and schuko has same safety features, except the fuse, which is not needed if your houses would be build better.
Local fusing provides notable advantages, even without ring finals. In particular, one failed appliance doesn't necessarily take out the whole circuit, and lower draw appliances can be more closely fused (e.g. 3A) reducing available fault energy.
It's not worth the trade off of the giant plug in my opinion. And local fusing doesn't really protect the user directly, it protects the wires. Modern codes in Europe put the equivalent of GFCIs on all circuits which can actually save lives.
GFCI will save people from direct shock , but won't always stop a fault from say starting a fire. Example a damaged wire arcing the live and neutral (not a dead short) won't trip gfci, there is no ground fault because the power is returning over the neutral as it should. And since it's just a partial arc short it's not going to draw enough to trip the main breaker so it can just sit there and get hot and catch fire.
Technically we now have AFCI to try and detect exactly that, but it's still relatively recent and generally very expensive to implement.
All that said, I prefer the g-type outlet simply because of the giant plug ensures a nice, proper, secure connection, and isn't shaped in a way that lends itself to being particularly damaged. Even if something lands on it, it's profile prevents it from being ripped out of the socket. Whereas the other socket types tend to stick out quite far from their socket and have a tendency towards being yanked out of it. Obviously I'm partially overreacting because I'm dealing with the absolutely fucking garbage type B Outlet I just want an outlet that will finally stay secure
Still not nearly as safe. Leaving it up to the home owner to replace the fuse/breaker for each circuit each time a device of a different amp requirement is used is very... naive? The manufacturer of the device shipping the item with the fuse that matches requirement is easier and safer. It may have been born from the ring mains requirement but it's much safer because of it.
Those fuses that can be changed by home owner themself have not existed in 20 years, all are automatic that you just flip from the panel. Fuse size is calculated based on the width of the cable, so if current gets too high the fuse just flips, so the cable doesn't melt.
Edit: as a counter part, if you plug multiple high usage components on same cable, the individual device/plug fuse does not blow, but the cable can melt inside the wall.
No, what they mean is that the fuse is rated for exactly only What that particular Appliance is expected to pull. Not what the circuit can handle. In my example the fuse in the main breaker isn't going to trip, because it's just an arc fault it's not a full dead short. It's not going to be pulling enough current to exceed the rating of the circuit. But it would be enough to exceed the rating of the appliance as long as it's not like a space heater or something
The wire from the plug to the device isn't the same size as that in the wall. So you can have a device cable melt and light on fire without tripping the main fuse. A fuse in the plug prevents this.
Your edit is assuming they're isn't a fuse at the central side. Of course there is a main fuse. And it is sized based on the limits of the wires in the wall
To add, we upgraded our house from 100A to 200A service a little while ago, and one of the companies quoted an AFCI box. Was something like $15k, compared to like $3k for a much simpler setup (which left our existing 100A box as a subpanel instead of moving everything).
Also, I run 3D printers, and apparently those tend to trip AFCI.
Rest of Europe doesn't like or use type G. It is bulky, can be used as a weapon, can only be plugged one way and compensates for shitty wiring that no one else needs or wants.
What we really need is a USB-C-style reversible plug with data and variable voltage where neutral and phase never reverse and earth is always there.
Lacking that, I vote for Type N because it's small, polarised, and the pins are halfway-insulated. I don't like that the frame is symmetrical, so in the dark, the only way to tell which way to plug in is to feel the pins and the holes, same as USB-A. I reject all that hurt to step on.
There's a smaller version of type F that has the same frame as type N, just missing the middle pin, so it is reversible.
It has the same risk of reversing neutral and phase as type F, but (while I'm no expert) that has never been a problem for me.
Japan is basically just 100V, not 110/115/120, there are some appliances that will use 200V. Similar to how the US has 240V. The weird bit with Japan uses both 50 and 60hz.
Right. That was the thing. They're 50/60hz based on location. I know something was different but I misremembered.
For the US, they use 240v split phase. The secondary on the transformers have a middle tap, called neutral, so if you go from line to line, you get 240v, if you go from either line to neutral, you get 115/120v approximately. The benefit to it is that you can use two 120v devices in series, one connected to line 1, the other on line 2 and the neutral connections simply connected together. Total load voltage is 240v.
But appliances that use a lot of current like clothes dryers, air conditioners/heat pumps, water heaters, and ovens, can be connected to 240v directly.
It creates some interesting opportunities and challenges.
People get this wrong all the time. North America is 120V for the usual outlets, but what comes into your house is 240V split phase. You get 240V in places you want 240V, like electric stoves or clothes dryers.
Exception is apartments, especially those with elevators, which use three phase. Then you combine two legs to get 208V and your electric stove is kinda shitty.
