Electrical question

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Actually, even if you plugged it in wrong, nothing bad should happen and it should "just work", as one blade would end up on the 'hot' and the other on the 'neutral' leg.

That being said, I wonder who actually approved a design like this...

It's made by GE, the same people who brought you the 30mm Gatling Gun on the A-10 fighter jet. "GE, we bring good things for living, we bring good things for life." (That was their 1970's commercial jingle.)

And worse still, the GE circuit breakers that only have thermal trip elements so in the case of a short circuit, they take their sweet time tripping (so much so that in commercial installs where the wire is in conduit, you can actually HEAR the wires ratting in the conduit until the breaker trips.)

[Steve Guttag]

They only use both receptacles for stability. That is likely why they are using a plastic peg on the ground (cheaper and part of the injection mold rather than setting a piece of metal). It is likely safer (for the manufacturer) to only, electrically, plug into one since it is possible to have different circuits on the two hot terminals if one wanted to have a switched outlet or just needed two circuits for ampacity, they could have cut the link to have the one receptacle have different circuits on each one. Using just one receptacle removes that possibility of causing an issue.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

The openings for the plug are not both the same size though. The left one is taller than the right on each pair of openings. A polarized plug could not be inserted improperly as the left blade would not fit into the smaller opening. This outlet extender was not intended for high current devices since there is an extension of only one set of contacts from the wall outlet.
I see that is seems to offer some sort of transient surge protection as indicated by the lights at the top.

This product is marketed under the GE badge. General Electric, like my old vacuum tube table radio.

[Mike Blakesley]

It sort of flares out on the sides so I think if you plugged in one blade, the other would bind against the housing.

What's kind of odd about it is, the whole thing plugs into one outlet on the back...usually these kind of taps have a set of blades for both outlets, but this only has one, plus a plastic pin that goes into the ground on the bottom socket. I guess electrically it wouldn't make any difference anyway.

[Steve Guttag]

I guess that is what happens when one does a "step and repeat" on their CAD drawing. As to the safety. It would only affect 2-prong plugs AND those would need to be un-polarized before you could get a "flip" between neutral and hot. If the plug doesn't have a polarization, then the device wouldn't care. If it does have a neutral polarization, it still gets the right thing because it is still Neutral to Neutral and Hot to Hot...you'd just lose the ability to use all 5 receptacles.

The short answer, don't worry about it. Even mis-plugged, nobody and nothing should get hurt. Possibly more dangerous is if one plugs into the far-right receptacles so that the hot blade goes in leaving the neutral exposed on the right. If the device is on (say a desk lamp), the exposed neutral blade will have 120V on waiting to tickle someone. Now the picture may not show that there is enough plastic to prevent the plug from going in on the right. I would hope that this sort of thing is tested for the dumbest person trying to plug something in...in the dark.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

No biggie. The outlet is polarized. No matter how you plug something in it's only getting 120 volts.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Actually, even if you plugged it in wrong, nothing bad should happen and it should "just work", as one blade would end up on the 'hot' and the other on the 'neutral' leg.

That being said, I wonder who actually approved a design like this...

[Mike Blakesley]

I know there are guys on here who know a lot about electricity so… I have this plug tap in my office. If you notice, the slots are all the same distance apart so you could accidentally stick a plug into it with the blades in two adjoining sets of contacts. Would that cause a huge short circuit if there was another plug connected “correctly,” or is it nothing to worry about? I can’t believe they designed it with the slots all the exact same distance apart.