ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Some german electrical info

Easy for a person used to NEMA colour-coding to make that mistake. I always used to get confused also.

It would make sense to make the brown the neutral.

What's the usual color of dirt/ground? Brown. What is the neutral? The grounded conductor. Therefore......(fill in the blank).

no, not another change
we also could make the hot green because most transformers are green... or gray as the alloy overhead lines...

things like making a worldwide color code or worldwide measurement system (metric for exmpl) should have been done way way before. i dont think they would nevertheless make some unique standard. too late

As an occasional visitor to Germany, what has struck me as odd is that the bathroom sockets are sometimes combined in a single plate with the wall mounted light switch. As you run your hand down the wall seeking the switch, your fingers go into the schuko recess !
I know hands are probably dry at the time, and that the contacts are much further back, but it just doesn't seem right.

Funny you mention that. I've also pondered on how brown might have been somebody's idea of a good color for earth/ground, but the English-speaking world just settled on green instead.


Here's the typical European ES holder:

@Geoff in UK: These are older ones. you won't see fixtures like this in new built rooms anymore.
And, you shouldn't touch an electrical fixture with wet fingers anyway.....

@pauluk: mmh, you posted a bad example this ones so wide open at the top. the ones i have here are all a bit deeper.

and no problem about your german skills

[This message has been edited by :andy: (edited 10-31-2003).]

DJK,

Re. that picture of the open right-angle Italian cord cap:

That thing looks like a pain in the rear to wire up. Especially if you're struggling with a thick cord.
It looks very tight in there and god help you if you don't cut the wires "just right".

I hate right-angle plugs sometimes. Hehehe...

Well, I would have thought like this:
When you look up at the sky to see the wires on telephone poles, you mostly see blue (assume it's a nice clear sunny day). And thus the hot wires should be colored blue. And look at the ground, it is either brown (bare) or green with grass. So brown should be the neutral.

So they got it backwards. :-)

Well, they did get green right....

Sven:

I never said Italian plugs were easy to wire

I find most schuko rewirable plugs that I've come across horrible to wire compared to UK ones. But then again UK rewirable plugs are huge.


Inside a normal Irish IS401 (BS1363) plug, fused at 13A.


BS546 15A rewirable.. so much space you could park a small car inside!




(this gives you an idea of the size of these things ... look at the cable entering at the bottom in comparision to the plug size!)


Note this plug pre-dates sheathed pins and would be illegal thesedays.



and a diagram of BS1363



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-31-2003).]

The reasoning behind the choice of colours was so as not to have them confusable with the other major systems that were in use at the time of the change over. They're also easily identified if you're colour blind dark = hot, light = neutral, stripy = ground.

As for plugging a european applience into a US 240V (2 x hot) outlet.

There are a few problems:

1) European appliences tend to be designed for 220-230V not 240-255V (old UK appliences might fare better). For all european countries, excluding the UK and including Ireland, the voltage was 220V 50hz for many many years. The UK standardised on 240V 50Hz (along with Malta and Cyprus). A decision was made to move to 230V (nominally) to bridge the difference. You might find that EU appliences connected to a US 240 supply might be running a little strangly.

2) They are designed to have a reference to 0V ground. Many appliences with electronic components, particularly computers, can have quite serious problems when used on an old 127+127V supply in Europe so I doubt they'd be very usable on a US split phase supply either.

3) as mentioned already the frequency difference would be a major problem.

I'm running my PC and its monitor off of a 240V 15A (NEMA 6-15) outlet here in the USA, and there are no problems (the grounding (green) wire does go to ground). It's the usual USA split phase supply (120V-0V-120V). That doesn't mean that every computer and monitor ever made will work properly fed this way, but most all such use switching power supplies. Switching power supplies don't care if it's 60Hz, 50Hz or 400Hz or even 1.4 x RMS voltage DC for that matter. These supplies convert the incomming power to DC, and then to high frequency AC, then back to DC again (with isolation from the line).

Devices that use power transformers (like vacuum tube radios) will not have much problem with a slightly higher line voltage at 60Hz vs. the line voltage at 50Hz. At least the power transformer itself wont have any issues, the loads might get a bit unhappy but a well designed radio should tolerate 10% excessive line voltage from its nominial rating. We get the same problem with antique radios and tube hifi sets designed for 110V, and today's powerlines routinely provide 125V.

Devices like phonographs, clocks, and some motors will have problems with it being 60Hz instead of 50Hz. They will run 20% too fast.