A useful source:
https://worldofsockets.com/
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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does type A just have no ground?
Yup. Japan also has grounded outlets, though, although they are comparatively rarer.
I recently had a house built, and most of the outlets do support grounding.
However, it's not very common to actually use them — many appliances don’t have grounded plugs, or the shapes don’t match.
I’d say only things like washing machines, microwaves, and rice cookers tend to use them.
collapsed inline media
collapsed inline media
are house fires and electrocutions common occurrences?
Grounded devices are only important if it's something that can build up charges or has a metal exterior that can become part of the circuit. Even then, it just takes something like a GFCI circuit to make something ungrounded near perfectly safe. House fires happen because of shitty house wiring or unattended or misused hot appliances, almost never because of ungrounded devices.That's more just a general shock risk that can be mitigated in other ways.
Especially these days with so many things being lower voltage DC past an ac to dc converter that should have a ton of protections in itself.
Not as far as I'm aware.
I see the left side of just slightly bigger than the right, so I expect one of those sides to be the ground
You'd think so, but the ground will either be at the bottom of the outlet, requiring a separate cable, or Type-B.
That's only on homes that have updated wiring codes.
My grandma still has the old aluminum wiring with type A. It's annoying as shit because there are so many grounded plugs and only so many adapters that take the grounded plug.
And then don't ground it. Fuck safety right
There is the GFCI in the switch box, but yeah, both gfci+grounded would be preferable.
A GFCI won't do squat without PE connected
Where? That is the most scuffed ground ive ever seen
Nope, just live and neutral.
Nope, the ground is a separate wire that just dangles there and never gets connected. Over the last 25 years I don't think I've ever seen a utilised ground wire.
In North America, neutral is connected to ground. It's the larger pin on a polarized plug. Some devices don't use it; these usually don't have a conductive outer surface.
It's the oldest standard on the list, and is still around older homes in the USA. They used to be equally-sized (aka unpolarized), but later on they had a bigger hole for neutral (polarized). They're not up to code anywhere anymore though, you'll only see them in older houses before the grounding pin was required.
In the USA, there's a ground in that the neutral wire is connected to ground. Devices that take advantage of this have a slightly broader neutral pin that won't fit into the hot pin.