ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades international power strip?

The big worry with ALL of those is that they'll happily accept a CEE 7/7 or Schuko plug without completing the ground connection.

The only multi-standard sockets that I've seen that looked fairly safe and acceptable were CEE 7/7 and Italian combos.



That type of outlet accepts either :


Italian plug

or

It's found in Italy, but also in Croatia, Monenegro and possibly other parts of Former Yugoslavia which seems to have a heavy Italian influence these days.

I actually quite like the Italian plug, it's very neat and does not have the grounding problems that Schuko / CEE 7/7 presents i.e. you can't mate a grounded italian plug with an ungrounded socket outlet without taking a hacksaw to the ground pin!

The IEC proposal for a world-wide 230V 50Hz outlet is very similar to the existing Swiss outlet (the IEC is HQ'd in Switzerland...)
Only difference being a slightly modified pin layout and rated for 16amps and always recessed.

IEC 60906-1

I think any country with multiple old standards should re-standardise to this. It should be an IEC requirement. It would clean up the mess in India for example quite nicely.



So far, only Brazil has officially adopted the standard.