do my USV sockets use power all the time and how do i know they're working correctly
this looks like one for you gordon
with the table set up like this i'd like to introduce gordon routledge to tell us what's
going on you must put your glasses on gary could get technical but hopefully not too technical
we've done a lot of videos recently about usb charging sockets and it's a bit of a divides
electricians down the middle customers love them a lot of electricians don't like them and one
of the reasons people say they don't like them is because they think when they're not actually being
used to charge they're consuming lots of power. It sure is that's the myth isn't it when they're in
this state here with nothing plugged in they're actually still using power yeah but hopefully
we're just going to prove that that's not the case right so USB sockets are covered by the European
eco design regulations i'm sure you've read them all there's lots of them JOE covered one described
as a lot 20. in a video to do with electric heating external power supplies come under the LOT 7
right okay and what that specifically says when it comes to a power supply is when it's not
being used or when it's an unloaded condition right it mustn't consume more than 0.3 watts of
power right okay so we've got four usb chargers there one in each of the actual outlets so that's
1.2 watts as a maximum load yeah that's it so yeah yeah even though there's two sockets here
that's classed as one charger yes um so yeah so let's uh let's just have a look we've got our
hairmag power meter here which i'd suggest is now working at the very bottom of its range yes
if you plug that in gary if you bring the camera in let's have a little let's have a little look
at what's going on right okay so see this is our line voltage coming in so bang on 230 volts
current almost nothing and this is the power here sort of dancing around at just less than one watt
so that's suggesting that these four usb socket outlets that aren't in use are
only using about one watt of electricity yeah so what i'll do now i'll connect up we've got
a tablet here that's waiting to charge i've got these USB C testers so we use quite a lot of these
i mean there's a there's quite a few testers on the market you can get professional ones
uh we picked up these from a online well-known online retailer with free delivery okay so would
that be amazon yeah it could be amazon uh and there's lots of versions out there of these
uh we picked this version because it's sort of in case there's a lot of open pcb versions in there
we just think it'll be bits get in there and shorten circuit out
so plug in plug in this panel here so you'll see we showed this in the previous video i've plugged
into the usbc outlet here the tablet won't charge off this socket okay so that's got no power for
that and if we go over here we're exactly the same position were before with it just flicking around
a little bit so no power are beyond the less than one watt being consumed so that's because
that needs quite a bit of power so i'm going to plug into this power delivery socket that we had
last time and we'll see that'll power up ah yeah i've heard beep bleep on the ipad and it's
automatically gone up to 15 volts it's drawing point four of an amp so that's about someone's
still getting there okay they're communicating between the two to settle itself in
yeah so that's about that's flipping around about eight watts it should be okay so if we go back
over here then yep that's dead right yeah we're flipping around a little bit seven to eight watts
as it settles into that charging process so there will be some losses in the power supply in there
but you can see as we as we load them up they do kick into action and start supplying power
to our devices okay so there's the first myth then so strictly speaking they do use a little
bit of power but under lot seven we know that can't be above 0.3 watts per unit okay and this
one was less than that wasn't it was slightly less than that so a tiny bit of power they're
not effectively on all the time um this is the myth isn't it gordon yeah and that applies for
whether charges built into a socket or is one of those little block type ones right okay that
won't be coming soon with your mobile phone in the future because they're trying to stop
that happening that's for e-waste and we covered that in a previous video as well
so so that's the first thing then so i'm a bit concerned because you seem to have uh
maybe dismantle one or two of these usb charging ports so let's go back and see that process as you
hack it to bits i see you're in with your your drill first as you're taking out the rivets
in order to expose what i would call the farmyard behind it in other words these pcb boards so
you're drilling them out i take your screwdriver to it in order to remove all the screws i've
speeded it up slightly so we're going to see gordon take out all the screws so he's going
to pop those out and then he's going to reveal underneath gently does it gordon we don't want
to lose anything out of there here we go is all the special components which i'm going to let you
tell us all about i've got a generous yeah so again usb sockets when the first came out of the
market got quite a bad press and then someone flagged up in one of our other videos a report
by the electrical safety council which was about four years old since then BS1363 has been updated
numerous times to include these uh charging sockets um so we'll probably have a closer look
go bring the camera in we'll have a closer look at some of the things that relate back to that
regulation okay i'm a little nervous as i come in so here's our unit with the front off so there's
the there's the shutter you'd expect to see on the on the socket yeah a regular 13 amp socket
i'll just throw that away okay no longer needed i'm doing that um so cleverly we have squeezed in
essentially what is a 20 watt power supply in amongst all the other workers that the
socket has to do so there's our double pole switch here um you know here's our two usb
uh socket outlets that keep them far apart which i'm you know some units are very close
together okay is there any concerns because obviously these are different voltages gordon
yeah so that is a lot of the safety requirements so i guess the first thing you'll see in 1363 is
this charging element which is here so this is a switch mode power supply that yeah obviously
converts our line voltage down to the law what was required for the usb ports right mustn't rely upon
the circuit fuse for the ring final circuit this is probably connected to
right okay so let's clarify that one for me just flip myself back in that makes logical
sense doesn't it it might be a 32 amp circuit breaker in the consumer unit or distribution
board feeding the socket outlets and we can't rely on if there's a fault in the charging lead
part of the circuit so from the usb out yeah of that 32 amp fuse disconnecting that makes logical
sense what do we rely on so rely on a fuse and there's a there's got to be a fuse either in the
line conductor that feeds the charging socket or on the circuit board itself okay so i took
a it's quite good that the camera we use is better than our eyes i took a photograph of that just so
we can we'll see it first and then we'll have a look at it i've just brought in gordon and there
it is clearly identified can you just remind me of his amperage 3.15 amp fuse 250 volts so
the T is a time delay so that's just to allow for any surge that might happen right in the circuit
when the initial surge when the power supply starts okay
should we say yeah i like that that's better so there is a fuse in it so when we said that
maybe if the charging unit wasn't working maybe correctly or at all i'm sure the first thing is
we'll think about the lead when we go into the device and you probably the customer
or the consumer would be running around trying to find another lead but it can be that the fuse is
obviously operating within that let's have a look let's bring that camera back in and we'll see the
fuse in where it sits in there so you can see it tucked away in there just pointing it again yeah
just there at the back and then you'll notice there's a lot of plastic around us designed to
isolate the low voltage side from the mains voltage side so you'll see the cables that
go out towards the usb sockets uh you know they have two layers of insulation okay yeah really
absolutely even if one layer fails you've still got another layer so there's no real chance of
that of the of the mains voltage appearing on the usbc socket the usb a socket on that one sorry
and that's what a lot of safety reports worry about it's this isolation of the primary side
and again we can see it on this on the switch mode display here is that a board dividing it
there is that green thing a divider yeah that's part of it but again if i swap there and come
in close on this one again you'll see there's a oh right it's a big nice clear gap on the this is the
mains voltage side of the charger yes the lower voltage side so you've got that clear divider
there yeah extra insulator you'll notice all the wires that go out to the secondary side again
have two layers of insulation and that's that's that makes logical sense you don't want 230 volts
appearing in your usb a or c outlet point here so when you hear sort of safety complaints about
these things is normally something to do with this isolation between primary and secondary okay so
i would say that this is this is a great bit of engineering these are hamilton ones were
featured in that earlier video yeah they've done a good job on on fitting that in there
yeah because of the space they've got okay and obviously and then they've got a subdivide the
other 230 volts from this reduced voltage for our usb charging put yeah really good so a lot
of technology in a very small place but remember there is a fuse in there so if it does fail it
could be that that fuse has um obviously expired in life would you like to go next Gordon yeah and
again just just back these little testers that we we kind of been using a lot in the videos
um that obviously what we're seeing now that usb chargers are getting a lot more
advanced and let's remember that it's often the device that determines how much charge is taken
and we call that the communication don't we yeah in partnership with the power supply
should we say so you plug in a device and then basically talk to each other to say
how much have you got for me and how much do they need obviously the device will never
draw more current than the charger can provide and can we show that perhaps if if i'll bring
hand cam in and perhaps we plug the lead into hand cam and we'll see how much power yeah we can see
some various charging modes let's try and make hand cam work twice so let's plug it in on the USB
socket so if you plug it in okay again another one of these little plug-in charger device they are
there's loads of these okay um so we'll go into the USB type a socket there okay yeah
you'll be able to talk me through the power so what we can see there is the voltage that's coming
out of the socket the current that's currently being drawn by the phone yeah so that's near to
the near to the uh the two point obviously 2.4 amps this socket can supply but the phones you
know depends on again it's the it's the phone that decides that and to a degree the cable
yeah but we can see there and it also if you plug this in for a while it records the milliamp hours
all right so obviously you can see how much capacity of charge has gone into a battery if you
want to look at that so that's on this one this um we looked in the previous video there's various
protocols for usb now you can get ones that do it on quick charge right which if we flip to
this socket this USB a socket underneath this header right okay so as this phone can accommodate
a quick charge you tell me this will punch a bit more into it yeah so what we should see
here is initially five volts and it should leap up to a higher voltage and be able to deliver
significantly more power to the phone so again plugging in our little tester look let's put them
up so the communication going on now and we'll see that power kick in it's five volts or two amps yep
well let's try it on the usb c okay we're in
yeah let's have a look now this one here should start at five volts
about one amp we're expecting something to kick up do we yeah so there we go the voltage is now
left up to nine volts yeah about one point two amps and that will level obviously charge the
phone considerably faster yeah right okay that's a good point to prove let's pull back out again
okay so yeah and that proved it so if somebody comes here you know got a certain
style of soccer outlet and they believe after perhaps using this one in the past and if this
isn't coming now in your iphone box because of e-waste they're not sending these out anymore and
you're using the usb and probably going to hear from the customer it's taking forever
to charge yeah so when you come around as the electrical contractor if you just plug one of
those sticks in that we got from amazon amazon yeah there's lots of them on there we will put
the link for these ones in the description below yeah they are very reasonably priced we don't
uh yeah we often say you you often try and convince people to buy a better quality of tool
that's right down the low end yeah these these are yeah these are pretty cheap and the
reason would say you know i'm not saying quite disposable but technology changes all the time
these are pretty handy to have in the toolbox if you're fitting a lot of these all the time
and if your customers like the sale things aren't charging as they once were yeah and
because these these are usually fast charge and when you're over to them it's about probably now
for the electrical contractor selecting the right outlet to obviously manage the expectation of the
charging process with the client isn't it and we do like the ones in the module there so that's the
euro module style that we've just gone in there because they are dedicated and
usually yeah and this this will go to yeah 45 watts and yeah i can even charge my laptop
off one of those not a really fast speed but it's yeah it's enough to keep it charged when
you're working on it there's lots changing in this field we know that we're probably
moving away from usb a over a period of time to usbc we'd love your comments below what's
your go-to socket outlet when you're looking at charging devices whether it be apple or samsung
please leave those comments below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can