Hi! We are once again in the airport this time traveling to Cuba and we are finally here now. Where is the outlet? Oh there is one there Hello my love I'll check you later Hey look what I found the breaker box is right in the room. It's nice. do they have GFCI This one from what I see here does look like has some sort of ground fault connection like RCI or something.

Something worth trying I see traces of some excitement here was I here before foreign Ing and our hotel is flooding on the fourth floor. Oh my. God I mean sure the maintenance is lacking and the hotel is a bit run down and the country is struggling financially because of politics. but people are very nice and the nature is very good here and the electrical system in the hotel seems pretty up to date.

Well I mean at least in the parts where electricity works I mean I showed you the fuse panel already. It seems they have one RCI that protects the entire room against ground fault and this is the test. It works. There you go and unlike our Hawaiian Hotel that had a broken GFCI and a bad what is it smoke detector, this one seems to have a updated one that with the green light that is blinking profusely so this is functional.

They don't have Outlets with GFCI in the bathroom but the outlets they have I think these are on Transformers that are isolated from ground I should check those and again it doesn't matter that they don't have GFCI It's like the European Italian one I tested in Italy They have one ground fault protection system for the entire room. How do I even check to see if this is isolated from ground? Is this ground? In any case, it seems like this outlet that is made for Shavers only has a 110 volt output and a 220 volt output with different type of outlets. But as you can see here, you can plug whatever that goes in here into here as well. So don't plug 110 volt device accidentally in here unless your device specifically says it's good for both voltages.

Okay, checking its voltage and it's 120 volts and the one on the top. These tiny protective doors don't even open, damn it. I Can't plug my adapter in here. Can't plug my charger in here.

Are they locked for good? Let me can shove my tiny probes in there somehow. Oh, there you go. but they are not connecting to any contacts. I'm not reading any voltages.

Okay, maybe then just the 110 volt is useful. Well, let's assume it's isolated and read the voltage between one of the outputs to assumably ground here and we are reading 113 volts. and if I move it to the other one I read 230 volts. What's going on? Hmm, so there seems to be some massive voltages between that outlet contacts to ground.

What are they real voltages? or they'll go away as soon as I load them a little bit. like as soon as I touch them, the voltage drops to very low levels and is safe. There is only one way to try it out. Foreign: I Put my meter on current.

So basically it's a short circuit I put a 1.8 kilo ohm at the end of one of the probes. and for example, if I put this between the 110 volts, what I'll see is a burnt yes, the resistor Burns because there is so much current running through it now I Picked a fresh resistor and I will connect one side of the probe to the power here and the other side to Earth and see if it blows like this. See, nothing's happening to the resistor reading: 0.23 milliamps. Let's see 0.3 milliamps through 1.8 kilo.

Ohms, It means there is 0.54 volts across the resistor. Yeah, it's safe levels. Let's put it on the other side. connect my resistor here and this time I'm reading same 0.34 milliamps.

So yeah, I guess it's safe to touch the hell. it's supposed to be isolated but I can still feel it. Damn it wasn't much though. and it's ouch.

I'm not even on ground. Why am I feeling this? This is the site that was showing 230 volts. What is this one? Can I feel this one? Okay, the side that was showing 120 volts I don't feel anything on that one but the side that was showing 230 volts to ground I feel it a little bit zapping. Me Maybe This Tap is not grounded.

but then again, I'm not grounded either. Why am I getting shocked if I bypass the resistor and directly connect it there. See, there are no arcs. So yes, I guess it is isolated from ground.

otherwise there would be like tens of amps running. But it also teaches us never underestimate the power of capacitive coupling. I'm sure the input line powers are coupled to those output voltages through capacitive coupling and some current is running through. Although it seems like it's around the safe levels, it shocks you a little bit, but doesn't kill you.

Hopefully foreign. Now let me check the outlets here: 230 volts 60 hertz. So all the outlets in this room are 230 volts instead of 120 so you have to be very careful plugging your stuff in here. Make sure it also supports 230 volts.

Measure the voltage. Oh good thing my meter tells me when I accidentally put it on current. otherwise it will blow up and we have 236 volts and the frequencies 60 hertz as promised. Okay, let's see first that which one is live and which one is neutral.

Well, typically this one with a longer input is neutral. but so this is reading 240 volts. I was wrong and this side to Earth is reading zero, Huh? It's different in America and Canada The shorter one is supposed to be live and The longer one is supposed to be neutral. It's backwards here.

Well, another one of these Outlets this one to Earth What? This one is zero and this one is 240. Well I Found your first failure in the room. How about this one here? So Earth to the shorter contact Is 240. So Based on two out of three, it seems like it is supposed to be like American and Canadian standard.

but in this one, the long contact to ground is 240 volts. Someone wired it wrong. Well, I don't have time to fix it for them. I have a tiny potentiometer and I'm gonna check to see if the ground fault protection actually works by increasing the current gradually.

So I suppose if I plug in my trusty naked wire in the voltage between the white wire which is typically neutral, but in this case live and the green white wire should be 240 volts. So I connect my potentiometer between love of God Okay, so the ground Vault Protection works. unplug first first. I try to connect my potentiometer like so although it does look a bit sketchy too.

I Just hold it solid like this so it won't short plug that in. now. Slowly turn the potentiometer, reducing the resistance and increase the current until the ground fault protection pops. Hopefully soon.

Come on, where are you? What? What's going on? I Don't have a voltage anymore? Oh I See the other breaker popped too Nice. So the breakers are actually healthy. That's good. Plugging again, slowly turn the potentiometer until the breaker pops.

Damn it. not again. foreign. What? This time the power is not coming back up.

I Think this time a breaker outside in the hallways popped I have to call someone again. the power is fixed. But on the bright side, I Realized that the technician who fixed our power had such bad tools and screwdrivers it was barely able to open the screws. So I passed on Ltt's fancy screwdriver to him and he was happy.

Thanks! Linus That means I have to turn my potentiometers by hand. now and now we are going to Havana to see what's going on there. foreign hostel or they call hostile Seems much better than our Resort Let's see if we can find its. Breakers Well I want the breakers to the rooms.

They're all here so it should be safe to test here. I Guess so many interesting architecture in the city. So in our room we have Outlets 110 volts here. True 20 here, another 110 and the lights are plugged into 110 as well.

So I guess we have both 110 and 220 in our room. The only issue is that these Outlets are not different at all. which means you could accidentally plug something that should be running on 110 into 220 and blow it up. Nice.

There is a 220 volt Outlet right here by the sink. Is it isolated? Is it protected? We will find out soon. Thank you! Okay, first thing first, let's see. So here we have 245 volts and if I connect one side to Earth we have 30 volts Ac.

This is the stuff you can get free energy from and checking the other contacts. What is this? That side is also 26 volts. Are they both isolated from ground? Maybe they are. Well, good.

It seems like the 220 volt Outlet is isolated from the ground anyway, which makes it safer. unlike the 110 volt. I Assume here we have 120 volts shaking the live to Earth What? We only have three volt AC How about the other contact? What? 17 volts is everything isolated from Earth ground here? Did they forget to connect Earth in all the outlets here? Or maybe that's intentional. You know, because if no Earth is connected, if you accidentally touch Live Wire it's less likely to get electrocuted unless you touch both live and neutral.

In which case, ground doesn't help. anyways. I Mean if none of the live Outlets has any reference to Earth ground, the ground fault protection GFCI or RCI wouldn't trigger. Anyways, if you touch the live wire and stay on ground, there is no current running through you to trigger it.

So maybe the system is safe like this. Well, now that I have this thing plugged in and I have my shoes on not touching any ground. Let's touch these wires one by one and see how I feel No, don't try this. Okay I just want to make sure they are truly isolated.

Well, I am isolated Anyways, starting with Earth Yeah I Feel nothing. The white wire? Whatever it is, yeah, nothing. and lastly, the black one. Nothing.

True isolation. I Guess that's what makes the system inherently safe. If there is no connection between the live voltages from the outlets to ground, any single point of failure wouldn't cause any real danger to the user I think I've seen this system before in Japan Maybe because they didn't have any ground either. but the real question is why is there different systems running in this country? one without ground completely isolated and the other one with the ground fault protection? I Don't know.

Important thing is that they were all functional so far, which is more than I can say about those systems in Hawaii. So I guess sure the country is struggling in some aspects, but at least they have their electrical system figured out. You know, safe tourism is important. foreign Thank you.

Nobody's gonna know they're gonna know lost there's sole of my shoe here, but nobody's gonna know. As you can see, we are enjoying the rain and the weather. Yeah, it's not that bad. We are back in our Baradero hotel and I feel a little bit bad about last time that I blew up my potentiometer and tripped the breaker and the technician had to come and fix everything.

So let's try it again because last time I didn't actually check and see if the ground fault protection trips at 30 milliamps. Let's do it this time. I don't have my Linus driver I Think it's better to make do with fixed resistors. here.

we have a 10 kilo Ohm resistor series with my current meter on 240 volt which should give me like 24 milliamps. Let's see if it trips the breaker. Oh took a while but it popped. Fortunately, there we go.

This time there is no explosion and the power is back. Let's change the resistance fine. I'll use my puny potentiometer but this time I adjust it first the value I want then plug it in. Okay so I set my potentiometer to around 12 kilo ohms for around 20 milliamp of RMS current or a bit less than 30 milliamp Peak current.

Let's plug it in. Oh, this guy popped and came back. My potentiometer died again. It's not made for that much power is it? Yeah? I should have brought a bigger assortment of resistors.

Okay, I put two resistors together to get closer to 12 and a half kilo. Ohms. Now if we plug this in, there you go. It's not tripping and we have close to 19 milliamps and it seems.

uh, my resistor started to smoke. Oh my God good. Then it seems like their ground fault protection is functional but instead of 30 milliamp RMS it triggers a 30 milliamp Peak or closer to like 24 milliamps. RMS Still, you are protected.

Safety! So I guess nothing failed here. Electrically country itself needs some work and here we have an electrical work of seemingly abandoned house which is actually not abandoned. Surprisingly people will still live in these houses. Cheers in the city.

So much history in these old houses. We have electricity. The issue is after the Embargo or revolution, people are left with a lot of good architectures and houses but never had the money to do the Reapers. So I urge you to come to Cuba yourself, make yourself familiar with the history and culture like great people.

Beautiful environment, foreign.