New Electrical plugs for SA

Hmmm, this looks good... aside from the conversion costs...

The new sockets support 2 different amperage levels... 10a with two pins and a whopping 20a with three pins.

Also entirely backwards compatible with the current 2-pin europlug.
 
dabbler said:
And India
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Yes and No. India adopted the same British plugs that we did in the colonial days. The standard consisted of multiple different plug sizes for different sized loads. The most common sizes were the 15 Amp and 5 Amp varieties.

The smaller 5 Amp varieties have fallen out of favour in South Africa - they can still be found in some older buildings. The 15 Amp size that we now consider the standard is far less common in India where they've mostly settled on the 5 Amp version.

The two different power ratings have different sized pins and spacings. For practical purposes they are completely incompatible.
 
Stokstert said:
But why change to a unique version which is used by only two developing countries. I can understand a change if it's changed to the majority version used on earth.
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Irrelevant. If you fight change to stupid, you're still a dinosaur. Like there never ever were failed adaptations and crocodiles never made it till the present era.
 
Space_Chief said:
So everyone is now going to rewire their homes and offices? And if not, new appliances won't work in older (current) homes?

Why South Africa? Why now.....?
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Dual personality sockets with the new plugs are already available in most electrical store. I actually prefer them as they allow a person to plug in cell chargers and other Europlug devices directly to a sturdy socket while avoiding those awful adaptors. I'm already installing them in my house.

This standard is fully backwards compatible with the Europlug. The main power pins have the same dimensions and the earth pin is optional. Having the earth pin as an option is an extremely good idea for safety on larger appliances.

I must say they I am fond of the Schucko plug standard. I've come across them many times in my travels and its a good solid plug like the current ZA ones. Its an old, slightly outdated standard which is a mashup of German and French plugs. The issue in my opinion with both Schucko and the ZA plug is that they're excessive for most modern electrical loads and thus too bulky. 80-90% of the appliances in the home are adequately powered with a Europlug or one of these new Type N's which take up much less space.
 
herbertk said:
I was also wondering how you would wire it... also wondering about something like a welding machine how would that handle these small plugs...
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Our current ZA plugs are quite over engineered. This means that we get away with connecting light industrial loads to home sockets. The safety of this is questionable. In my opinion we should really be using IEC 60309 plugs (aka blue caravan plus) for this kind of thing.
 
With the old SA plug you could always file the British/Singaporean plug down to fit. But one thing no-one in SA is able to do is produce decent SA plug to Euro (two pin) adapters which hold the Euro plug properly.
 
lizzard1981 said:
Can I just say, in my 32-years alive, I have never read even 1 report or heard of 1 person that stuck their fingers in a electrical outlet.
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Because parents are vigilant! The first thing my son did the moment he could crawl (and I have it on video) is crawl to a plug point trying to stick his finger in there! Suffice to say we safegaurded every plug since... These smaller pin plugs make sense from a safety point of view...
 
I also have a lot of negative feelings towards this. But I must say, it looks like it will take up less space on a multiplug. My current multiplug is a nightmare, some plugs is too big to sit next to another and then there is always not enough space.
 
beans100 said:
I also have a lot of negative feelings towards this. But I must say, it looks like it will take up less space on a multiplug. My current multiplug is a nightmare, some plugs is too big to sit next to another and then there is always not enough space.
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I've read that some are designed that way so that there isn't as much heat generated as when they are bunched together. Makes sense with transformers.
 
Check out AC power plugs and sockets in Wikipedia.

South Africa is the first country that formally accepted the IEC 60906-1 as a national standard under SANS 164-2. The idea from the international standards association (IEC) is that all countries that uses 220-250 volt adopts this same standard. The plug is wonderful and was in double plugs (old standard and new standard) already available for the last 4 years and I installed this in my study and bedrooms. The introduction of the new 3 pin plugs (I bought this last sunday already at Builders for R15 a piece) allowed me to get rid of big adapter plugs and I started changing all plugs to the Veti plug with one old plug and three new plugs on the same 4 x 4 adapter. I already changed two plugs in the Kitchen and replugged the Coffee machines, kettle, Air Fryer that uses on plug and it looks very much neater.

The old standard that we are all use to is the old British standard from 1916 that was changed by the British in 1947. I think the Apartheid Government did not want to accept the new British standard in 1948.
 
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