People who joke about legos haven't stepped on this bad boy
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.
Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.
No it isn't. It's debatable if the safety features are still necessary with modern wiring and electric code imporovments, but the features are objectively there, and they objectively make the plugs safer.
And the design of these features wasn't because of "substandard" wiring. It is because the UK used to use ring circuits in old houses, which are unsuitable to be protected by central breaker boards with breakers for each room, necessitating fuses in the plugs. That doesn't make the system any less safe. As long as a fuse is present, and the circuits are adequately sized, where precisely on the circuit a fuse is located is irrelevant.
Also, the fuse inside the plug provides an utterly unique advantage that no other country has: The fuse can be used to protect the external wire from over current. Centralised fuses are exclusively designed to prevent over current on the main, internal circuit, they don't give a crap what happens on the other side of an outlet. A central fuse protecting a 16A circuit will do nothing to stop you from pulling 15Amps through a 3 amp cable. A fuse inside the plug, appropriately sized for those 3 Amps, will in fact protect the cable itself. This is particularly useful for extension cords. Other countries without fused plugs need to either just flat out mandate ALL extension and multiplug cords be capable of safely handling the maximum current of a household circuit (e.g. Germany) OR just ignore that rather major safety hazard entirely and just kinda hope that nothing bad happens (e.g. USA) (if you've ever wondered, that's specifically why chaining extension cords together in the US is considered dangerous)
The USA approach to this is to mandate a comical number of outlets everywhere (to prevent extension cord usage), mandate a large number of individual circuits (especially for things that draw a large amount of power), and more recently some combo of AFCI/GFCI/CAFCI breakers (to provide some level of sensing things going wrong and shutting off power).
The stats are not great for the USA in terms of number of fires. I haven't done deep research. From personal experience, most homes built after modern US electrical code was fleshed out are generally fine. Modern homes (or ones upgraded to modern code) seem very safe - the "smart" breakers tend to actually work.
My anecdote here is that my relatively small hometown area (15,000 people, largely built up between 1860-1940) still has frequent fires relating to electrical and heating systems and the current city I live in (95,000 people mostly built up starting in ~1960) has very few fires ever. I spend 2 weeks a year around Christmas back in my hometown. 3 of the last 7 years had a structure loss fire while I was there. In the same period of time there have been 2 structure loss fires in my current city total.
And Europe doesn’t have old houses with the same difficulty in wiring?
So you’re not saying it’s because the wiring is substandard, but because it’s ring circuits, which are not up to the same standard as if they used a breaker panel.
Isn’t that the same thing?
No, because the rest of the world isn't America.
Those ring circuits WERE up to UK standard, and perfectly safe when they were constructed, and nowadays are either still covered by the standard, or grandfathered in, meaning at minimum in existing buildings, they still in fact are up to UK standard.
The reason other counties don't use ring circuits isn't because they're less safe or inherently worse in any way, which the term "substandard" clearly implies. It's because they're less convenient. It's easier and more convenient to make and use, and easier in terms of individual steps, to make safe seperate fused circuits instead of a ring circuit.
The reason the UK used ring circuits was because they use much less copper conduit, and given the massive ~~copper~~ everything shortage in the UK during and after WWII, the convenience of modern circuits simply wasn't worth it.
And how exactly doe the same exact thing not ally to a branch Circuit suffering a break?
The standards the UK adopted pass higher voltages and higher currents per household circuit than pretty much anywhere else. They adopted standards that allow them to use use less wiring, less copper to provide the same energy. They can plug in many space heaters on one circuit, where two or three would blow a breaker on a US circuit.
That higher voltage and higher current makes their household circuits inherently more dangerous than household circuits outside the UK. A fault in a UK circuit passes a lot more energy than a similar fault elsewhere, before tripping a current-limiting device. The exact same fault in a UK circuit is far more dangerous than in a circuit pretty much anywhere else in the world. The standards for household wiring in the rest of the world are a lot more restrictive than the standards adopted in the UK.
UK plugs on Japanese appliance in Japanese houses (for example) are overkill. The safety provided by the UK plugs is built into the Japanese breaker panel and wiring. Putting the UK plug/socket into a Japanese circuit provides no significant additional safety benefit. The Japanese plug/socket on a UK circuit would be extraordinarily dangerous.
The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite "higher than any other country"
Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That's quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.
And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it's safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it's at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands.
Again, the amount of current passed depends only on the voltage, which again, is the same in the UK as all of mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world except America and Japan), and has been since the early 20th century, so I've no idea what you're trying to go on about there.
And lastly, no it isn't. For one, the child safety shutters on all UK outlets are certainly not contained in a Japanese breaker panel. Neither are the fuses in the plug, which protect the external wiring. And nor is the insulation on the lower legs of the contacts contained in a breaker panel. The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There's exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.
Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I've rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.
Electrically, current depends on voltage and resistance/impedance. In practice, (and most importantly to this discussion), current draw actually depends primarily on the characteristics of the current limiting devices such as breakers, fuses, etc. Breakers on UK household circuits are designed to allow considerably more power than comparable breakers around the world.
This is the primary factor I am talking about.
Those fuses are not needed in Japanese (or North American, or most other) plugs. We don't need to protect the "external wiring" separately from the household wiring: the household circuit breaker is rated lower than the "external wiring". Drawing a direct short on the "external wiring" in a UK circuit is not sufficient to trip the UK circuit breaker in the UK distribution panel; they need a secondary current limiter (a fuse) to provide that function.
We don't need fuses in our plugs, specifically because our household circuit breakers are designed to trip well before your fuses would blow. (We do include fuses in any appliance or device with wiring not rated to full current.)
The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don't need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current), a flared base on plugs, protective accessories for outlets in risky locations, and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.
That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.
To protect humans from electric shock we use residual current devices, which trip at 10's of Milli amps. And here's actually an advantage of a ring circuit. It forces you to place RCD protection on every single outlet in the building, instead of skimping on costs by just putting it on the branches that legally require one, like bathrooms and kitchens.
That's just demonstrably untrue. An individual branch of a household circuits in both the US or Japan can easily be fused at 20A (fun fact: European branch circuis, because of the higher voltage that you were raging against in your first comment, can handle more electric load whilst having SMALLER 16A breakers). In both Japan and America you can buy extension cords rated for 10 or 15A. So no. You just told a straight up, unequivocal lie there. And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.
And even if it weren't a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it's in the wall or in the plug, as long as it's there and does it's job both would be equally safe.
No it isn't. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren't, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they're so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.
Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That's why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).
And don't think I didn't notice you just quietly avoided responding to any of my arguments pointing out the obvious falsehoods in your voltage claim.
Frankly, at this point, all you've done is utterly convince me that you are totally and utterly unqualified to speak on this topic. Almost every claim you make is wrong. And not even just "slightly oversimplified/technically incorrect" wrong, just straight up demonstrably untrue.
Stick your finger in a 20A outlet, and you'll pull out a burned finger. Stick your finger in a 100A outlet, and you'll lose your hand, or your life. More power will pass through you before the circuit can be interrupted.
The power standards that created the need for UK plugs were developed long before RCD/AFCI/GFCI protections were adopted. Those later protections did not influence the decision to use that plug design.
Our appliance wiring is rated to carry 20A from the receptacle throughout the appliance, or to a secondary current limiter within the appliance. Since the wiring is rated to the 20A the circuit can provide, we don't need the secondary fuse in the plug. This is part of our appliance wiring standards.
If you have a 30A outlet, and you plug a cord rated to 20A into it, that cord will be overloaded before drawing 30A. Which means a fault in the appliance might not be capable of tripping the 30A breaker. For safety, you would need the cord to be rated to 30A to ensure the breaker will trip. The UK doesn't use 30A cords on appliances that only need 2A of protection. They put a 2A fuse in their plug, and use a cord capable of surviving a 2A fault. (In practice, UK cords have about the same rating as US cords; a 20A fuse in the plug would suffice.)
Our breakers are rated at 15 or 20A. We require our cords have to be rated to be able to survive 20A without catching fire for long enough to trip a 20A breaker, even if the device is only expected to draw 2A. We don't need the secondary current limiter, as the circuit breaker is designed and intended to trip before a fault allows the appliance to catch fire.
Different rating. An extension cord rated for carrying 10A continuously will still survive a 20A fault. The voltage drop through that cord will be out of spec, which is why it is only rated to 10A.
Obviously. That has been part of my point the entire time: You use fewer, higher wattage circuits. UK circuits carries more power to pass through your body than a comparable circuit elsewhere in the world. The household wiring standards in the rest of the world are more restrictive than they are in the UK. You are repeating the exact points that I (and others) have been making from the start.
30A @ 240V in the UK. 16A @220V in the EU. 15/20A @ 120V in North America. 20A @ 100V in Japan. Keep those numbers in mind, assume someone is touching a live wire sticking out of their wall, drop the attitude, and re-read my comments from the very start.
Did you just deliberately ignore everything I wrote ? Both 20 and 100amps are several hundred times more current than it needs takes to kill you. And the resistance of your body is way to high to pass more than a few hundred milliamps anyway.
For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.
No it isn't. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you're replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi. Are you deliberately ignoring half of what I wrote ?
Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You're gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it's fused at like 40 MILLI amps.
Man I fucking love how you literally just picked out the first line in a comment pointing out another one of the things you said that are objectively untrue (a dead short not blowing a UK ring fuse) and ignore everything else in the comment. You must have seen the comment to quote part of it, and yet you ignore it entirely. You're clearly and demonstrably not arguing in good faith.
That's fucking rich, when I've literally explicitly addressed every single point you made, whilst you seemingly deliberately ignore half the ones I make. Literally repeating falsehoods I disproved in the comment you're replying to, whilst you're replying.
I covered that. Different rating. That 15A cord will survive a 20A fault. Its rated at 15A because the voltage drop will be out of spec at 20A draw, not because it will be a fire hazard at 20A. You will be able to get enough current through that 15A cord to trip the 20A breaker. You might not be able to get 20A through a 5A cord before the cord catches fire.
My point is that UK appliances are specifically not designed to trip UK breakers in a fault. US devices are.
In every jurisdiction where fuses are not required in plugs, appliance standards require the appliance to be able to trip the household breaker. This is a fundamental concept of electrical safety.
That's actually false. You're conflating the resistance of "skin" with the resistance if the "body". Once you burn away that skin, your internal resistance drops substantially.
ANY cable being driven above it's rated load is a fire hazard. There healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it's fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid. And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it's max rated load.
Nope, again completely untrue. Breakers are only required to trip if the circuit becomes overloaded.
Your breakers don't, and can't give a shit about what's happening on the other side of the outlet.
Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it's drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I've pointed out, repeatedly already, and you have repeatedly ignored, breakers are solely and exclusively for protecting the wire from overheating /overloading.
And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.
I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write
So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven't already explicitly addressed this anyway ?
At this point I think calling this behaviour accidental would be an insult to your intelligence, and just have assume that you know exactly what you're doing, and are knowingly and deliberately arguing in bad faith and with intellectually dishonesty, so stop. Just go away. I'm done. You're either fully incapable of, or unwilling too, engage in honest debate, so I'm not linger interested in continuing this.
Breakers are only required to trip if the circuit is overloaded. That part is correct.
The internal resistance of drastically undersized wiring may not be capable of passing sufficient current to overload the household breaker. And yet, pretty much the entire world (except the UK) doesn't require fuses on their plugs. The unfused power cords for those non-UK appliances are either a fire hazard OR those cords are required to be able to carry sufficient current to trip the current limiter without catching fire. The latter is, indeed, the case. This is a big part of UL, CSA, CE, and other electrical certification standards around the world.
That's actually part of NEC code applicable in the US and Canada, and I'm not going to delve too far into it, as it really pisses me off. Basically, there is no functional difference between our 15A and 20A components. The standards needed for a component to carry 15A in North America are the same as the standards needed for it to carry 20A. Effectively, our 15A components have a safety margin 5A greater than that of our 20A components.
The historic and technical distinctions for this are well outside the scope of this discussion, and I think it is, indeed, moronic. But yes, technically, we can indeed use certain 15A-rated components on a circuit protected by a 20A breaker.
Here again, you're demonstrating my exact point, despite claiming that what I am saying is "completely untrue": The rest of the world builds its appliances to tolerate at least that 16A fault. For the UK to use that exact same manner of protection, they would need to build their appliances to tolerate a 30A fault. The same appliance would need a much heavier power cord in the UK than in the EU.
Since no rational person would want to overbuild each and every appliance to be able to tolerate a 30A fault, they included a fuse in their plug. That plug, unneeded in the rest of the world, is an essential component in the UK. That plug is what allows the UK to be able to safely use the world's 16A appliances on UK 30A breakers.
(No, the rest of the world doesn't need 16A before "anything" trips. The rest of the world includes their fuses inside the appliance, immediately after the cord rather than on the plug end.)
Yeah. If you undersized a en entire houses ring circuit at AWG24, then indeed a 30A fuse wouldn't be tripped. Though on the plus side, to even achieve it you would need to undersize the wire to such a massive degree that the wire itself just becomes a fuse.
In a our real world overhere, of fucking course a ring circuit can pass enough current to trip it's breaker, and it's fucking laughable to claim they can't.
No they don't. They can actually use much smaller power cords. Because there's a fuse in the plug itself. If the plug itself has 1A fuse, then no matter what happens, the maximum amount of current the device can ever consume is 1A, so 1A is the highest fault current that device will ever have to handle. The UK system actually makes fault protection on the device side much better and easiest.
Appliance wiring, not household wiring. I clearly specified that. You're reading what you want to read, and not what I actually wrote. You're laughing at yourself, not at what I claimed.
Remember: most of the world safely uses unfused plugs on their appliance power cords. Their 16A household breaker is the only current limiter available to protect those unfused power cables. Those normal sized, unfused cables would be drastically undersized if plugged into a less-restrictive, 30A outlet.
You read what you wanted to read, and not what I actually wrote:
The rest of the world relies on their (ostensibly) 16A household circuit breaker, and not on a fuse in their plug. For the UK to rely on the household breaker, their appliances would need to be able to handle a 30A fault.
That fused plug is not necessary in the rest of the world. The rest of the world builds their power cables to handle 16A, and puts their 1A fuse inside the body of the appliance. The UK needs that overbuilt plug, specifically because their household wiring standards are so much less restrictive than those of the rest of the world.
I think you've lost the plot. Every time you argue for a feature provided by the UK plug that isn't needed in global plugs, you're making my point for me: The UK plugs are vastly overengineered. The necessity of that overengineering is due to less-restrictive household wiring standards.
The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite "higher than any other country"
Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That's quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.
And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it's safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it's at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands..
The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There's exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.
Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I've rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.
That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.
And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.
And even if it weren't a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it's in the wall or in the plug, as long as it's there and does it's job both would be equally safe.
No it isn't. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren't, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they're so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.
Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That's why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).
For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.
No it isn't. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you're replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi.
Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You're gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it's fused at like 40 MILLI amps.
ANY cable being driven above it's rated load is a fire hazard. There are healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it's fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid.
And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it's max rated load.
Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it's drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I've pointed outñ
And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.
I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write
So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven't already explicitly addressed this anyway ?
Here's a list of prior arguments I've made, that you fully ignored. Until.you give me s good faith really to THE ENTIRETY of each argument,. I'm ignoring you.
240V @ 30A is the highest on the planet. You consistently ignored current rating, despite recognizing that without the special, overengineered fused plugs, appliances would be exposed to them. Your inclusion of this is dishonest.
The claim you're rebutting is not the claim that was made. The claim that was made was that each UK circuit has higher current than a comparable North American circuit. Which is true. A UK household circuit is at 30A, while Canadian/US/Mexican is at 15/20A. American and UK homes use roughly the same amount of total power, but the American home typically distributes that power with roughly 4 times as many, lower-current circuits.
Both of us have rebutted that several times already, in recognizing that a low-current wire is a fire hazard when connected to a high-current household circuit. You make that argument yourself, below.
Conceded. The insulated prongs on the UK sockets are not "overengineering". Such prongs are used on Europlugs as well. That leaves the extremely large size of the contacts, necessitating the shutters.
Everything? Really? My "rebuttal" is to ignore this ad hom.
The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs. Every argument you make that requires fuses supports my contention.
You're assuming the internal resistance of a wire of sufficient gauge. An undersized wire - such as a power cord intended to be used on a 16A EU appliance - may not be capable of drawing 30A, let alone 1000, without catching fire. It may only draw 28A while it is glowing red hot. That same unfused power cable is perfectly acceptable and perfectly safe on a 16A EU circuit, but is unsafe on a UK household circuit without that special UK plug.
You're ignoring the original point and arguing something tangential and irrelevant. The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs. Which means that their power cables are simpler in design and construction, but necessitates that their power cable must be able to survive the full rated household current. The UK does not use this "unfused plug" design philosophy. The reason they don't use it is because it would necessitate that their power cables be capable of surviving 30A faults, rather than the 16A in the EU.
The UK does not restrict their household supply circuits to 16A. They allow their household circuits to carry 30A. That standardization decision necessitates the fused plug that the rest of the world simply doesn't need.
Again, conceded: The sleeved contacts are not part of the "overengineering" of the plug. The EU plug uses a similar design. American and Japanese plugs are deficient in this aspect.
Not an accurate observation of my understanding at all, and not particularly relevant to the discussion. The topic of discussion is the relationship of plugs to household wiring.
Conceded, with the caveat that the RCD/AFCI/GFCI device for the 20A circuit will be more sensitive and allow lower current to pass than the equivalent RCD/AFCI/GFCI device on the 100A circuit.
The 15A extension cord in Japan is designed to be plugged into a Japanese outlet. This is the same bullshit historical and technical issue that we have in our NEC code, where identical components often have different nameplate ratings. That 15A extension cord is specifically designed for use on circuits protected by 20A breakers.
Conceded, and irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I addressed this with my diatribe against the NEC's position on 15A vs 20A components. The 15A extension cord is specifically designed for use in a circuit protected by a 20A breaker. It's an asinine provision, but it is there.
I suspect that those cables actually do have a fuse in them, much like the fused plugs used on North American Christmas decorations.
Yes, exactly. Which is why the unfused portions of that device have to be designed to handle at least 16A.
Agreed. I've repeatedly made that exact argument in support of my point.
I confess, I didn't read it. As It wasn't and isn't particularly relevant to the core issue, I'm happy to concede the point.
So your argument is that if you remove a necessary safety features the system is suddenly less safe. Well fucking shocker. That's no different from me saying that if you used a ring breaker on a Japanese branch, it would be exposed to 30A and just as dangerous, and therefore concluding the Japanese system must be worse.
It's a stupid hypothetical that tells you nothing about either system.
Also, at the point where a device is drawing short circuit current, EITHER breaker will trip most instantly, and whether the threshold is 30 or 20, the device is a smoking pile of burnt plastic afterwards anyway.
And again, breakers aren't designed to protect devices, and devices aren't designed to withstand some kind of massive fault tolerance based on the circuit they're plugged into. No device on planet earth is designed with the concept of "it has to survive even when a 20A short circuit happens. And even if so, it would just be "short circuit" in general. Because as I've pointed out, a dead short will trip EVERY breaker, instantly,, period. As I've pointed out repeatedly, 7A rated power cords are completely legal to sell for use on 20A Japanese outlets.
But if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. But specifically. I want specific and concrete measures and steps that you aledge are taken specifically to guard devices based on the fusing of the circuit they are attached too.
Sure, the current on one ring is greater than that on one branch, that's is true, I'll concede that. I just consider it irrelevant. The total current coming in at the terminal connection though is half as much in the UK than the US. The US commonly has 100, 150 or 200Amp service panels.
No it doesn't. Because you're laboruimg under the delusion that breakers are designed to protect anything beyond the internal wiring of your walls. They don't give a shit about anything else. That is their singular and sole purpose. Look for example at America. America has UNFUSED multi cords rated for 7A. There's literally nothing stopping you in America from plugging a 7amp rated extension cord, into a 20A outlet, plugging in two space heater on max and a third one on low, and pull 18-19 amps through a cord rated for 7, and no fuse or breaker is going to stop you from doing that. So quite demonstratably, at minimum one part of the rest of the world very much does NOT safely use unfused plugs.
The code HAS those fuses, and with those fuses it is safe. Safer than a central breaker system in fact. You can't just keep racking caveats changes and asterisks onto the UK electrical code and then laughing at how unsafe is. Every single arguement you make where you need to exclude/ignore safety features that the UK system has, is in fact an argument in favour of the system.
A power cord intended for a 16A EU appliance would be illegal to sell in the UK without an 15A fuse in the plug. Problem solved.
Again, you can't argue the system is less safe when you keep needing to ignore safety devices to make that argument. I could just as well as say that without your indivisible branch breakers, the Japanese system is unsafe, and the UK manages to work perfectly safely without individual branch breakers. According to you, this is valid logic to demonstrate the Japanese system is worse than the UK system, and every time you mention branch circuits or branch breakers it just strengthens my point.
I can just as easily flip that argument, about the UK safely using ring circuits with plug fuses, whilst the rest of the world needs to use branch breakers to keep their branches limited in size.
You're literally just talking about the fact that the unique system in the UK requires unique safety features. That is itself value neutral, and adds nothing of relevance.
Considering you were arguing that Japanese plugs need to handle LOWER current, when in reality it's the exact opposite, they have to handle HIGHER current, I'd say it's an accurate observation. The most common standardised all purpose plug in the UK is fused at, and rated for 13 Amps. Well below a 20Amp. Japanese circuit.
Your caveat is wrong. The baseline leakage current is affected predominantly by voltage and cable length. A 20 Amp circuit and a 100A circuit could both perfectly adequately and safely be protected by a 30mA RCD.
Relevant to the issue at the time, which was you claiming the outcome of electric shock changes based purely on the amperage rating of the cable used.
So the entire core of your argument, other countries not needing fuses in cables/plugs has just gone poof then.
I'd like to a citation for the claim that appliances need to be withstand the Maximum current in a fault case. Also what "withstands" is even supposed to mean in this context.
But In my opinion, even if that's the case, that's a point in FAVOUR of UK plugs. You can receive literally the IDENTICAL level of safety by making the appliance 3A fault tolerant, and giving the plug a 3Amp fuse.
Isn't the ability to make every device individually fault taulerant so much better than needing make them all fault tolerant to the max current.
It's also far safer abroad, because you're literally taken the fuse in the device with you. According to you, what happens when a device designed for a 16 Amp EU socket is plugged via adapter into a 20A Japanese socket. Now suddenly it has inadequate fault protection. Do the same thing with a UK socket, and it maintains the exact same level of fault tolerance it's always had.
So if you agree with all my points then what exactly is your issue with the UK ekectric code ?
It seems to me that your entire grape is based around the fact that the same safety features are achieved differently in the UK, and you never argue about those safety features being worse, you simply point out that they are necessary, and somehow that makes the system worse. Also, small current fuses are arguably safer than circuit breakers. You can't detect a defective breaker, until it fails to actuate at excess current. A defective fuse would just be broken, and not allow a circuit to form in the first place.
I happen to have (several) 30A 240V circuits in my house and shop. The one I was using tonight has an arc welder plugged into it. Under the applicable electric code in the US, this circuit has to be dedicated. It can serve only one outlet. If I want another 30A outlet, I have to wire a completely separate, dedicated circuit for that outlet. I can only install such outlets in certain places within my home and shop.
That is the standard here in North America. The standard for EU, Japan, and the rest of the world is comparable. North America (And possibly Japan?) has an additional feature in that our 240V circuits are split-phase: They expose the user to a maximum 120V fault to ground. To experience a 240V fault, you have to be ungrounded and simultaneously contact not just one but two opposing hot phases.
The UK daisy chains single-phase, 240V to ground, 30A outlets throughout their homes. They put circuits suitable for arc welding in their bathrooms. They use circuits suitable for arc welding for their alarm clocks and hair dryers.
The UK requirements on 30A circuits and outlets are far less restrictive than the requirements on 30A circuits and outlets in the rest of the world. The UK uses substandard household circuits, necessitating their over-engineered plug.
The UK could have deprecated their 30A circuits in favor of the 16A circuits in use in Europe. They elected to keep their substandard, arc-welder-ready outlets and over-engineer a plug instead.
And here we are again. For the billionth fucking time in a row:
THE CURRENT CAPACITY OF A CIRCUIT HAS ZERO, NADA, NULL INFLUENCE ON THAT CIRCUITS ELECTRIC SHOCK POTENTIAL OR SEVERERTY AND IS NOT RELEVANT WHATSOEVER FOR HUMAN SAFETY.
And device safety is MORE THAN adequately provided by fused plugs. You just irrationally hate the UK network for some fucking reason, and are yet completely incapable of providing even a singular valid argument as to it being less safe.
Of course it is. That's not the issue under discussion. The issue under discussion is "Why does the UK use overengineered plugs not needed in the rest of the world?"
And the answer is because their household circuits are radically substandard relative to those in use in the rest of the world. Without those special plugs, UK circuits would be extraordinarily dangerous.
People die in fires.
Not the topic of discussion. Again, the topic is "Why does the UK use overengineered plugs not needed in the rest of the world?" To understand that, we consider the hypothetical use of non-fused plugs on UK circuits, compared to non-fused plugs on global circuits. When we consider that hypothetical, we realize the exceptional danger posed by that condition, and we identify the need for those plugs.
Because that is not the topic of discussion. The topic of discussion is "Why does the UK use overengineered plugs not needed in the rest of the world?" The danger is not the plugs. The danger is the household circuitry. The plugs are the safety device grafted on to restore the degree of safety the rest of the world enjoys without those special plugs. Of course the plugs are safe. The danger arises when we hypothetically apply the world's non-fused-plug standard to UK household circuits, in order to understand the necessity of those plugs.
Projection.
popcorn.michaeljackson
You know that extension cords can have breakers or fuses in them?
Unless they're mandated by code, I don't care. Basic safety being an optional add on by the manufacturer is bad.
Care to elaborate on this? Imo it does sounds like a win if that's the case.
Post-war reconstruction, they had a massive copper shortage. The wiring standards they adopted allowed for using as little copper as possible. That meant fewer, high-amperage circuits, rather than many low-amperage circuits. They used "ring circuit" topology instead of "branch circuits" to allow them to use undersized wiring.
Basically, all the shortcuts they took in their household wiring introduce considerably greater risks than exist elsewhere, including North America. Their household wiring is overloaded relative to most of the rest of the world. They mitigated the risks of their household wiring with stricter standards on their appliance wiring. Which is why they need a plug for their phone charger comparable to the plugs we use on a welder.
It's a good plug A damn good plug. It's just complete overkill for electric systems outside of the UK.
That makes sense, but imo for those country that follow UK standard with 220v/240v power everywhere in the house, it better be overkill than not. But then i guess that's why EU also have this two pin plug for low power application that come with partially insulated pin, and won't hurt your feet when step on. Best of both world!
collapsed inline media
It's not just the voltage It's also the allowable current per circuit. UK circuits allow much higher power (wattage) than single household circuits in the rest of the world. That's why they need those big-ass plugs on each of their appliances.
Thank you for pointing this out. A "good enough" system that downloads all the headaches onto the users. War time shit.
Sounds like the problem is people leaving plugs lying on the ground? Otherwise known as user error.
Or what they called it: Skill Issue.
Also best for staying in sockets but not getting stuck
You sound like ElectroBOOM.
Australia's is way better lmao
AS/NZS 3112
Simply the best
I won't go that far
There's no UK standard for three-phase and high amperage sockets or plugs. In fact, UK sockets don't support 16A three-phase at all, so if you have higher power needs (for example for EV charging) you're left with having to install a dedicated wall box that uses an entirely different connector than the 3-pin UK plug, BS 1363.
Given this incompatibility, how can you argue that UK sockets are better, for instance, than SN 441011?
To say nothing of how comically giant every appliance plug needs to be, regardless of how low its wattage is?
I did notably just say that the plug is the best in the world for electrical safety. I've made no claims of it's usefulness or convenience outside of that.
(( am also unaware of any country on the planet that uses the same plug/connector for general purpose household devices and 3 phase power. The number you provided, SN441011, also just leads to relatively generic household plug that doesn't seem fit suited for multi phase use either, so not sure what you're trying to say. I've also rarely seen places outside of industrial environments that have multiphase outlets, except in America, which has split phase power, and uses the voltage boost by going phase to phase instead of phase to ground. There'll you'll do often find 240V split phase outlets for high power appliances like shop heaters, electric clothes driers or EVSE, but those outlets also require unique receptacles and plugs))
E: I believe I misunderstood exactly what you meant. You're complaining that UK electric code has nonstandard for a high power plug+socket combination. For one, that though has nothing at all to do with this plug. A lack of standard for a completely different plug has nothing to do with the quality of the plug at hand.
Also, there actually IS a standard, that is specifically adopted for EVSE in the UK. You can have a dedicated 400V three phase 32A circuit installed in your garage, and terminate in a red IEC 60309.
It's not that the standard doesn't exist, it's just the UK has a very very heavy preference for simply hard wiring high power and multiphase appliances.
It's a minor nuisance yeah sure, but it also has the nice advantage that there's no need to fully mould plastic around it. UK plugs are pretty much universally openable, meaning you can repair them yourself if a fuse dies, or one of the wires comes lose. It's also really easy, and literally all you need is a single screw driver, to swap a working plug over onto a cable who's plug has broken.
But even so, it's again not a safety issue so not exactly relevant to my poing.
By this logic, a potato is the best in terms of electrical safety. That's of course tongue in cheek, but if we're reducing plug capabilities in the interest of calling them safe, USB-A 1.0 is the "safest" because it only outputs 5V at 3A.
I'm sure I don't need to point out how the plug is part of a broader electrical system and forms an integral part of it. Excusing the plug from an entire host of applications by stating that a different standard solves for that is the very point of my comment.
SN441011 is the Swiss system that through its 2-, 3- and 5-pin design supports single- and three-phase for up to 11 kW in domestic applications.
As an aide, regarding fuses in UK plugs: Putting the onus of electrical safety on the user for home repairs with a screwdriver is, in my opinion, inherently unsafe, especially when there's no safe backup through a circuit breaker. Imagine an impatient user replaces a burnt fuse with a piece of aluminum foil.
I'm concerned that you thought that was legitimately some kind of good point you made there. The fact that we're talking about a household plug and socket is blindingly obvious from context.
I have literally never in my life thought for even a millisecond "hey wouldn't be useful if I could plug my regular appliances into a high power outlet too ?"
How many multiphase and high power outlets do you people have that needing to be forward compatible with regular single phase household plugs is relevant ?
There's like maybe 2 or 3 devices in a home that even need multiphase high power outlets, like ovens+ranges, electric driers or water heaters or EVSE. And none of those tend to move around much.
Also, again, as I literally stated in in comment of above, that is a matter of convenience , not safety, so it's an irrelevant point.
What if someone does that to a car fuse ? What if someone does it one of those old circuit fuses that you still get in old buildings without breakers ?
Or imagine an impatient home owner duck tapes their breaker/GFCI to "ON" because they can't be arsed to find the fault that makes it trip every 20 seconds.
Idiots ignoring obvious safety instructions will make most ANY system unsafe. It's not like replaying a fuse is a hard or dangerous process. Most plugs allow you to just clip out the fuse holder with anything small and pointy, swap it with an equal, and then pop it back in. It's not like we're expecting people to do rocket surgery here.
Thank you for your concern, but the comment was, as I said, tongue in cheek.
I'm confused about why you're being so hostile. My only intention is to understand the rationale behind labeling the UK plug as the safest. We've already identified that the manner of how it fits into a wider, modern domestic setting is antiquated and other standards and plugs need to fit this purpose. You for example called out IEC 60309 for EVSE, SN441011 for household appliances, and the risks that plug fuses introduce through the nature of them needing to be repaired by an unskilled layperson with analogies to similarly unsafe practices.
If other plugs provide safe alternatives for the issues I've reiterated, shouldn't we be looking at those plugs as safer alternatives?
Impossible to plug small plug into big power. I see no problems.