Voltage converters for Scandinavia?

Question

I will be traveling to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark next year...possibly also Ireland and England. The first 3 are a definite, so I'm wondering what kind of power adapters or voltage converters I will need? All I really plan on using them for will be a hair dryer, curling iron, and cell phone charger. Thanks!

Answer 1

You may find this link useful

http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

All of Europe, including Scandinavia, the UK, and Ireland use 220-V electricity.  You may need to voltage convert the electrical items you bring with you, but you may not.

For the phone charger, look at the power adaptor on the cord.  Somewhere it should have a bunch of technical information, and one of the pieces of information will tell the voltage range.  If it's a US-only device, it will say something like 110-120V.  If it can handle both voltage systems, that range will go up to 220 or 240V, in which case you won't need to do anything special to use it in Europe.

The same thing goes for your hair dryer and curling iron.  Chances are that these will not be dual-voltage and will need to be converted.  For items that do need to be converted, the next step is to find out the wattage.  Voltage converters are designed to handle different wattage amounts, so you need to be sure that you get a converter that handles the appropriate range.

For the hairdryer, it will be an extremely high wattage.  You may actually be better off investing in a travel hairdryer that can handle both voltage systems.  On these devices, there's usually a switch that you can set to the correct voltage system.  A simple version can cost as little as $10-15 at a discount store like Target.

You can usually buy voltage converters at some discount stores, at travel stores (Samsonite, Brookstone, etc), or at specialty electrics shops like Radio Shack or Fry's Electronics.  Alternatively, you can find them at a number of online stores or places like eBay.

So that covers voltage, but don't forget about plug adaptors!

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all use the common European plug with two round pins.  The ground on the plug is in the round plug base itself, so the outlets are round indented holes with the grounding points on the sides.  Assuming you're coming from the US, a grounded plug adaptor looks something like this:

http://www.110220volts.com/Merchant2/gra...

A non-grounded plug adaptor usually looks like this:

http://www.boxwave.com/images_bw/product...

One important thing to notice is that your hair dryer may have a polarized plug, where one prong is larger than the other.  In that case, be careful when you buy plug adaptors, because a lot of them do not have wide enough holes to fit the polarized plug.  Some do, but if you get one that doesn't, you may have an extremely difficult time using it!

In the UK (incl. England) and Ireland, they use a plug with three rectangular prongs.  This is different from the rest of Europe.  Here is an example of a UK plug adaptor.  It's a "universal input" adaptor, which means that it can take any kind of plug (including the US) as input.

http://images.auctionworks.com/hi/61/614...

Plug adaptors can usually be found at the same kinds of places that you can buy voltage converters.  However, they're usually much easier to find.