Europlug - Incompatibility With UK and Irish Sockets

Incompatibility With UK and Irish Sockets

The Europlug is not compatible with British BS 1363 13 A sockets for three reasons:

• BS 1363 sockets contain a child-safety shutter and need an earth pin or a combination of pins to be inserted before the live and neutral contacts become accessible.

• The ring circuits found in many UK homes are only protected by high-current breakers (typically 32 A) and therefore rely on a lower-current fuse (typically 3–13 A) in each plug to protect the appliance cable from dangerous overcurrents when a fault occurs. Europlugs are not designed to contain fuses or switches. In most other European countries, it is customary to use radial circuits, where smaller groups of sockets are each protected with a fast-acting 10–16A circuit breaker, a current limit that even Europlug cords can support briefly in fault situations.

• The free space between Europlug pins (13.5±0.5 mm) is slightly less than the corresponding dimension in a BS 1363 socket (15.8 mm). While europlug pins are designed to be flexible, the resulting bending force, plus the wider tip of each pin, can sometimes make the pins difficult to remove from a BS 1363 socket. Further proper contact with the europlugs smaller pin is not guaranteed by the relevant standards.

It is physically possible to insert a Europlug into most BS 1363 sockets by inserting another object into the earth hole first. Doing so is not recommended for the above reasons. Nonetheless, such use of a Europlug in a BS 1363 socket is not an uncommon practice in many countries where both BS 1363 and Europlug connectors are on the market (e.g., Malaysia, Singapore).

Equipment sold in Britain with a Europlug must be marked with or accompanied by a warning that it is not suitable for use in a British mains socket. The exception is that shavers, electric toothbrushes and similar personal hygiene products may be supplied with a europlug as an alternative to the larger BS 4573 2-pin plug. The Europlug is compatible with 2-pin shaver sockets used in British bathrooms, which have isolating transformers.

The flat design of the Europlug and the comparatively large shape of the British plug made it possible to design fused converter plugs that have outer dimensions only slightly larger than most normal BS 1363 plugs and that encapsulate an entire Europlug internally. They can be fitted quickly and safely by relatively unskilled personnel (there is no real way to get it wrong unlike a normal rewirable plug which can be miswired), making them attractive to manufacturers and importers who sell equipment in the UK that was manufactured using moulded Europlugs.

A major quantity of electrical/electronic equipment imported into India have a Europlug. The Europlug fits poorly in many Indian style 3-pin sockets, except in some cases where the plug can be inserted diagonally (this is possible with a 5-hole socket).