"B N R" on street pole

I saw this street pole today on a rural road (actually just inside someone's property)

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Does anyone know what B, N and R stand for? Just curious :)

Reply to
rowan194
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---------------------------- Just a guess (that could easily be wrong!)

Maybe Blue, Neutral, Red (white isnt connected on this pole) In larger switchboards you often see the phases colour coded as red,white,blue. Makes it easier than having all 3 incoming actives in red

Usually after they go through the 3 phase switchgear and off to their loads (power points etc) they just use red.

Reply to
kreed

Err, I always though the pahse colours were red, blue and yellow (well at least in Australia). Can't comment on the the rest of the world though.

Reply to
Alan Rutlidge

On Feb 13, 1:27 pm, "Alan Rutlidge"

Good morning,

They would stand for Red, Neutral and Blue for Red Phase, Neutral and Blue Phase - white phase would seem to be absent on this pole Most power companies have conventions for identifying conductors on the pole, red phase usually being closest to the road. Yellow has not legally been able to be used for an active or any other conductor for some time now. Aussie wiring is Red = Phase A White = Phase B (Formerly Yellow but hasn't been since the 70's) Blue = Phase C Black = Neutral, Green/Yellow = Earth

Brown and Light Blue are used in flexible cords, and only on sizes under 4mm as defined in Australian Standards. Fixed wiring is as above.

Cheers

Reply to
j.l

Thanks for the heads up on the phase colour change. Not being a sparkie I rarely get to poke my head into a switchboard these days. ;-) I wonder why they changed the colour from yellow to white?

Cheers, Alan

Reply to
Alan Rutlidge

two points , mainly for avoiding confusion with a striped earth but also most of the world around us sees white as the death colour so all over Asia white is active ( look inside many a/s split systems)

Reply to
atec 77

Red and yellow can look very similar to some colour blind people, as well as green and yellow.

Reply to
swanny

I think its actually Red and Green that is the most common form of colour blindness. Reason for banning yellow wires for any function at all is that it would look pretty similar to earth wires. Green cannot be used for anyting other than earth for the same reason.

Besides you can't really do electrical work while colour blind as it you do need to be able to distinguish colours.

Never heard of the white/death thing before but I guess its possible. USA uses white for neutral and black for active.

Some european made circuit breakers use a "cream" coloured wire as a functional earth (how thats different from white I don't know). Telecommunications earths sometimes use Purple and wires inside imported industrial equipment seem to use any colour for anyting including green for actives. Yes thats probably not compliant but it does exist and is something to watch out for. Portable temporary earth wires/cables power utilities use on high voltage equipment is usually coloured orange but for a number of reasons these aren't likely to be confused with anything.

Cheers

Reply to
j.l

Bazza, Normie, and Ritcho. The 3 local blokes that were silly enough to go up the pole, and string the lines. :-)

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Reply to
Don McKenzie

From memory (could be wrong!) I think Germany used to use Black for Active, White for Neutral and Red for Ground!

I presume now they use the standard Blue,Brown & Green/Yellow.

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Reply to
Alan

That is a nasty trap for the unwary too. Many people in Aus seem to assume that the White in a US cord is the active, and when changing to an australian plug, wire accordingly. Also the active is on the upper right on a US socket, not upper left like here.

Some japanese cords I have come across years ago have white/black too. Can't remember if they use the white as an active or not though. Best to check inside the appliance first to make sure.

I remember seeing this on an old german projector cord some time ago, had a red (or red with black stripe) for the earth. Was only discovered when changing the mains plug from an old bakelite one. Cord (naturally) was replaced with a standard Australian one. Cant remember what the A and N colours were but they were also some unusual colour combination. Since the projector had mostly a cast metal body, it was a deathtrap if wired wrongly

interesting, can anyone enlighten us on this ? The UK definitely uses this standard on appliance cords from what I have seen, so its possible that this has become a european standard - or within the EU anyway.

Reply to
kreed

if you're interested wikipedia has more than you'll ever need to know on the subject.

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Reply to
jasen

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