New IEC appliance outlet now provides status indication

The new technology offers flexible design options including the number of light pipes, 1-4, as well as options for light pipe lengths and diameters. The flexibility of design allows for efficient customer-specific solutions, while enabling increased opportunity to signal status information from the power grid to the user.

Using intelligence efficiently

A typical application consists of power distribution units used in data centres. Today, these units are most likely to have monitoring systems with indicating display panels or controls. These display panels are often centrally located. With SCHURTER’s new appliance outlet, it becomes easier to extend the systems monitoring capabilities from the centralised display to each outlet. Service technicians can clearly see which systems are working properly or respond to required maintenance adjustments. A connector could, for example, signal an outage with a red LED, or a critical power consumption pattern with a yellow LED. In this way, both repairs and preventive maintenance can be done more simply and efficiently.

The integration of the light pipe into the appliance outlet brings about multiple advantages. For one, the many types and number of light pipes available make it possible to completely individualise circuitry that assigns unambiguous signals to each outlet, potentially each corner of the outlet. There’s also the potential for substantial space and cost savings. The indicating light is located as close as possible to the outlet, instead of discretely mounted nearby the outlet, thus leading to a reduction in the strip size altogether or increasing much needed space to add outlets to the strip. There’s also an overall cost reduction that results from integrating the light indication into the outlet, whereby the need for drilling separate holes and other associated logistical and manufacturing steps are reduced or eliminated.

Efficent assembly and safety

In addition to the special benefits that appliance outlets with integrated light pipes offer, you should also consider the advantages of SCHURTER’s connector range overall.

The series 6610 appliance outlet, for instance, has insulation displacement connector terminals (IDC). The outlets can be wired in banks L, N & E or N & E with the L wired independently. The two, or three, conductors can be pressed simultaneously in the IDC terminals. The cover remains locked, providing equal protection of the contacts, while at the same time making the wiring and hence assembly more efficient and cost-effective.