ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Siberian Oddysey

Not a problem at all, Ian!.
Actually, I found it quite fun seeing all these pictures pop back up as the posts were edited with the new links.
The best way I've spent a Saturday morning for a while.

Hutch,
The potential wire provided above MV and HV lines, is only really used in areas of high Lightning occurence.
We have 110kV and 66kV lines here that are for the most part, along their length, unprotected.
Not to say that is necessarily a good thing, but it also depends upon the quality of the Surge Diverters on the lines in question and the Earth Resistance of the soil.
Now Ian you would have a better idea of the soil there than me.

Probably a tad off-topic,
But I would invite Ian's ideas of what the food was like there?.
Can you en-lighten us?.

To paraphrase from the thread about forum-posters and lightbulbs:- We all eat, so it's on topic!

Hutch, I was just noticing that the picture of the single Schuko socket (with the grounding pin bent up and away) is a South Korean-market socket.

If you look closely at the large size picture, you can see the SK logo (a K inside a stylized S) for the Korean Standards bureau. This is the organization that certifies all the electrical bits and bobs sold on the market there.

Korean devices use American-sized wall boxes for mounting. American sockets are still used there in some places also.

The grounding clips (which in Korean wiring are not connected to anything) in Korean-made Schuko sockets are very thin pieces of spring steel, so they can sometimes get damaged if you're rough when inserting a plug.

I have a couple of sockets like that here at home.

South Korea uses 220 volts with two live legs for domestic electricity (both pins are "hot").

There is no neutral and there is no earth. Obviously polarity is not a concern for the Korean electrician.

Nah, Sven. South Korea does use the 220/380V system as well as some old 110/220V system. They wouldn't bother installing Schuko sockets if there was no ground anywhere.

My guess is that what you are describing is their way of converting an old 110V two-wire installation to 220V: With just two wires and a center tapped 220V transformer, the only way to get 220V is to make both wires hot and conveniently forget about grounding... Unless you want to go for a full rewire, of course.

C-H

That's what I was told by a close friend/almost relative who lives in Anjong-Ri a medium-sized town near Seoul.

Her experience (in two different apartment buildings she's lived in so far) is as follows:

Standard ungrounded sockets in standard domestic situations. These normally look like this (they fit in American boxes):



A Schuko plug will fit properly into one of these but it obviously is not grounded.

Some office and commercial buildings may have these types (the holes you see in the middle are the screws that hold the different parts of the socket together):



The grounding contacts are not connected to anything, normally. So a Schuko plug will fit properly but obviously the ground conductor goes nowhere.

Some more knowledgeable users manage to install grounding rods for their house systems and then these sockets are properly grounded.

The person in question managed to install a 110 volt system by installing large step-down transformers. I think these are isolated or something. I definitely know her 110 volt system is grounded.

The typical replacement plug you will find in an electrical shop is one of these:



They're used for almost any domestic replacement situation - even lamps and small radios. Europlugs tend to fit loosely into the Korean sockets, I've found out.

The above is a "contour" plug -- you know the one with the two notches in the round face so that it can bypass the grounding clips in the Schuko sockets.

This is a website of a big electrical items manufacturer over there. Page is also in English if you click the link.
http://www.iseao.co.kr/

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 08-09-2005).]

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 08-09-2005).]

Mike, I certainly did not starve and during the two weeks I spent there I put on weight! There was a huge amount of protein but I can’t say whether this is a normal diet or due to the fact that we we’re on a semi-government sponsored trip.

The food was very ordinary in the main – lots of dried fatty sausage (coarse salami and blood sausage), smoked salmon and large, sticky, orange salmon eggs. Eggs were always hard boiled and there was always tomatoes and cucumber. Cabbage soup was very common and tasty. I never had any fresh bread – it was always tired and dry, and sweet – likewise the cheese, a cheddar like clone. Meat was most often fried in breadcrumbs a la Vienna Schnitzel. Potatoes and rice were served. The seafood we had in Magadan was superb!

And so to drink… Tea was far more popular than I had imagined – more so than coffee amongst the locals. My emergency stash of the stuff never got touched. “London Blend” the label declared with a fine picture of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben* on the box deep in darkest Siberia.

But liquids also hosted the dark side of the force… I expected Russian vodka to taste better somehow but I have to confess that the first few shots did not. After that I ascribe any improvement in flavour to the paralysis of my taste buds. The toast is an institution and undertaken with solemn formality akin to more ancient times – toasting your host, your colleagues, the mission, the State and of course Mother Russia – and any other country whose nationals were present. We had the UK, USA, Oz and Mongolia on our trip. You were expected to slam the first shot of the evening down in one but here’s the inside tip – you can sip the subsequent ones with no loss of face or offence to your host – it is strongly recommended that you do this. That is my safety statement in this post.

The toasts went on all evening and I never recall the vodka running out…………….

The beer was very good and Baltika is recommended to those who imbibe.

Magadan Oblast (State) is a beautiful part of the world outside of the towns and would be on the worlds tourist maps were there more infrastructure. To those of an adventurous spirit I would recommend a visit. I would love to go back.

And finally to get back on topic, I never observed anyone cooking on electricity – always on gas.

*Just a postscript to say that Big Ben is actually the name of the bell that dongs the hour. The building is technically St Stevens Clock Tower – but not many realise this.