I don’t think we will ever see a radical departure from CEE 7, but just a slide towards either Schuko or the Belgian/French design being the de facto EU norm in the Denmark and Italy. The costs and inconvenience are too high and the standard is well developed and robust.
The mandating of RCDs has really eliminated many of the serious risks around grounding, so I’m sure the Danish system can just survive. Most grounded major appliances also don’t tend to get moved around much.
The bigger issue might be with growing online retail. It’s becoming a slight issue here where appliances are arriving with CEE 7/7 plugs and being used long term with adaptors.
We already have a system of converter plugs, which the continental plug is fitted inside, effectively turning them into BS1363 fused plugs, and they can only be removed with the use of a tool. These are intended to be permanent. They’re pretty good solutions when fitted on on CEE 7/16 (Europlug) and even CEE 7/17 (non grounded plugs used on say vacuums and hairdryers) if a but bulky, however on grounded Schuko, especially the where the cable exit is at a right angle, they’re just huge, bulky and too unwieldy and it’s better to simply change the plug.
I honestly don’t see BS1363 being changed here. The amount of hassle involved simply isn’t worth it and as a system it is very solid and well established. You don’t ever find anything else on the wall and there’s no ambiguity about grounding or polarity as the legacy two pin plugs are long, long gone and backwards compatibility was deliberately eliminated by the current standard.
We’ve a slight issue with CE marking, but only if manufacturers no longer seek it for smart plugs, phone chargers etc. It is being replaced in the UK with a UKCA mark since Brexit, but effectively it’s the same thing anyway. It’s very likely most of those devices will continue to be CE approved anyway.
The issue is Ireland can’t import non CE devices, so we might have a problem in years ahead with some of those plug in devices, unless we can get a derogation for them, which to be quite honest would be a lot less hassle than changing millions of sockets…
The UK may ultimately end up just accepting CE regardless as I have a feeling the approach they’re taking is just going to become rather unnecessarily expensive and is just a flag waving exercise and they’re not leaving CENELEC. My sense is they’ll probably in the end just cooperate in technical matters like Switzerland or Norway does. There’s politics and there’s pragmatic reality.
Last edited by djk; 04/14/22 07:36 AM.
