A website containing a vast, vast collection of domestic electrical plugs and sockets from all over the world, including more information and details about them than you knew existed. I’ve been stuck here for hours. Be wary of going in – you’re never coming back out. But you’ll be happier for it, since there’s enough information here to last a lifetime.
One of my favourites is this one from Sweden – I was baffled by these at first when emigrating to Sweden a few years ago, but now I appreciate their genius and safety compared to just tying down live wires for ceiling lamps like we do in The Netherlands. Another fun and weird one is the Perilex plug, which is incredibly satisfying to plug into its corresponding socket (I used to work at a hardware store that sold a huge variety of plugs and sockets).
I could go on for hours!
I first experienced these after moving to Finland and I’d never seen anything like them in the UK. But I’m curious to know what was so surprising about them: are they more than just a pluggable earthed ceiling socket?
I’ve always preferred the European CEE 7 compact approach to plugs compared to the UK’s unwieldy non-linear BS 1363 design. From a completely naive user’s perspective it seems to me a really good plug should:
1. Be compact.
2. Physically shield the connectors before electrical contact is made.
3. Cover the holes on the socket side until the plug is inserted.
4. Avoid physical wobble.
More recently it seems allowing space for wall limpets and the like has also become more important, and I’d like to see electronic (e.g. USB) sockets become a standard addition to wall sockets.
In practice the old US sockets do all of that just fine. (even though regulation happy politicians seem to want to continue changing what already works).
They are the most compact, there is enough plastic there or a shield to make it difficult to touch the connected prongs. Really old plugs were even smaller but lacked the finger shield.
I find the CEE 7 type fails at 4… Brazil uses a slight variation of them that I am familiar with and it tends to break at the plastic bit where US sockets if bent you just bend them back and you are good to go.
USB C sockets also have issues, in that I’ve frequently damaged a USB C cable by completely ripping the shell off the cable end due to either a fall or yank on the cable.
cb88
What politicians? I haven’t heard that and if true it’s news to me.
It’s still dangerous for kids – it happened to my brother. Metal can even fall into the gap accidentally.
The exposed electricity even encouraged an electrical outlet challenge on tiktok…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5XJ1RThaVw&t=5s
I think the UK plugs are safer in many ways: plugs that don’t expose the electricity in an air gap, mandatory fuses, ground pins being installed on top instead of underneath the mains. 240V even uses less current for similar applications.
I’m curious how this translates to actual hazards, but I didn’t find any studies comparing the statistics directly.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-related-fatalities-and-non-fatal-casualties-in-dwelling-fires-caused-by-electricity-2010-11-to-2020-21
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/#causesR
US sockets seem incredibly poor in design to me, and I expect are only acceptable because 1) that’s what they’ve always been like and change is hard, and 2) you’re using 110V, which isn’t *quite* as likely to be lethal as European systems.
It’s funny to see things like “make it difficult to touch the connected prongs” touted as a reasonable safety measure. It shouldn’t be difficult, it should be absolutely impossible, end of story. Not having mandatory grounding pins just seems bonkers to me too, and having so many appliances with reversible polarity makes good fusing a little trickier, and the relatively large amounts of wriggling that’s possible with US sockets and plugs means the “wall wart” type power supplies always tend to sag and not be very secure in the socket – plenty of wobble to be seen there. And compactness isn’t a safety thing as such, but while US plugs are compact in terms of volume, they stick out from the wall further than, e.g. UK and Irish plugs which are designed at a right angle. This also puts an additional bend on the cable as it sags down from the plug around 45mm from the wall, whereas in the UK and Irish design it’s about 10mm from the wall and is already routed downwards so no bends are needed, while the whole plug body only comes out 20mm from the wall. Having the cable further from the wall and sticking out at right angles makes it more prone to damage from being knocked, pushing furniture against it etc., not to mention being partially pushed out of the socket at an angle, something that is almost impossible to do with the UK/Irish plug.
You make good points about plug profile and orientation. From my own experience modern UK/Irish plugs fulfil points 2-4 in my original post, but fail miserably at 1 (compactness), withstanding your point about its low profile when plugged in. It’s apparently impossible to design a BS 1363 plug that fits well in a bag or that can be sensibly oriented to lay flat on a table (unless you do something clever with moving parts),.
I’m not so familiar with US plugs, but EU sockets (at least recent ones) by my reckoning satisfy 1, 2 and 4, but not 3. What I really love about the CEE 7/16 design is that it’s linear, so it’s possible to create plugs that are svelte when disconnected.
After already spending way too long looking through the museum, I’ve yet to see an optimal design. It’s really astonishing how little standardisation there’s been across national borders.
There are schuko sockets with increased contact protection, often sold als child proof. There are also aftermarket safty covers, ususally you have to twist the plug to push it in.
Their bulk has never been an issue for me – how many plugs do you take in a bag with you, or how small is your bag? For me, it’s rarely more than 1, and I’ve a couple of chargers that have folding earth pins that puts them almost the same size as the equivalent charger in CEE 7 format.
Swede here. I had to familiarise myself with the Perilex plug and socket when I bought a new stove a few years ago. I’m very grateful that the socket had “PERILEX” written on it. It saved me a lot of time and trouble.
A problem with these sockets is that the neutral wire is sometimes missing since older stoves that ran on 400 V three-phase didn’t need it. (The plug on my old stove didn’t have a neutral pin.) So, if you want to connect something like an induction stove that runs on 3×240 V, you have to check and double check that the neutral wire is actually present before plugging it in.
I remember a Dane commenting once on the Swedish lamp sockets, saying that they didn’t have them in Denmark and that they just used a “sugar cube” (a white plastic terminal connector). Though, judging from the website, some Danish lamp sockets do exist.