Have you seen how Japan does grounding of appliances?

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Look at around 9 minutes.

Who the hell thought that was a sensible idea/ standard to sign off? rather than a 3 pin backwards compatible plug/socket ?

In fairness, seams to be for washing machines and AirCon units
 
A surprisingly large number of countries seems to consider earthing unnecessary faff. At least in Japan pretty much everything is double-insulated. I‘ve even seen a double-insulated full-sized fridge.
 
It's not necessary to have the ground wire plugged in. Same for computers and washer, etc. so just plug it in normally and you're good to go.




 
We have the same
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and Europe even more, we used to use two pins a lot in grandfathers day, and I have worked on a Robin tunnel boring machine with a delta set down transformer outlet, so no neutral for anything to be bonded to.

The DC cranes in the steel works had two bulbs in series, with centre to earth, so if there was a fault, one light would go out, and the other one go bright.

Building of Heathrow T5 the batching plant control circuit had the same idea, if the drum was stopped, it was impossible to restart full so that also had the two light system, if lit a new batch should not be started. OK, came from Germany, and it seems their safety systems are not as good as ours, to be fair, it was an export only model, which should have not been exported to UK, but somehow it got here.

It was classed as portable equipment, OK needed 22 articulated units to move it, but it was still portable, took two days to PAT test.

Falklands was claimed to be the same as us, but I saw many generators with no earth electrodes, supplying farm houses. And how many times have you fitted an earth rod before using a portable generator?

Again T5 we had floodlights, 220 volt centre tapped generators, and it had 110 volt outlets line to centre tap, until I pointed it out, and sockets were removed, and blanking plates fitted. Seems some buyer found them cheap, imported from the USA, never did check the frequency.
 
In most civilised parts of the world class 0 appliances (single insulation inside metal enclosures, no earth) have been banned for several decades, in some countries for almost an entire century. So everything we get should be class I (earthed), II (double-insulated) or III (SELV). Along with class 0, installations that relied on a lack of earth potential for protection against electric shock were banned and some form of CPC connection at each socket required, unless the socket is explicitly designed to only accept plugs exlusively used for class-II devices (mainly the flat Euro plug).

Class-I devices must be connected to the CPC and I‘d argue that the Japanese method of using a loose earth lead with a spade connector poses a much greater risk of floating CPCs than an earthed plug and three-core lead. Not only is it likely that lazy or incompetent people won’t connect the fly lead, I‘ve also read that there’s a decent chance the screw on the socket is only „connected“ to a plastic back box or plywood wall and the socket is supplied with twin cable.

An Australian Youtuber living in Japan rewired his entire 1980s house and insisted on fitting three-pin sockets throughout. He had to use the red core of three-core cable because it was impossible to find the correct cable with black, white and green (Japan follows US core colours, black and red lives on centre-tapped supplies, white neutral, green earth).
 
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