(13 Nov 2021, 11:06 am)Dan wrote Agreed. It all boils down to Health & Safety requirements. Drivers have to manually turn the 240V sockets on, and if one fuses, it knocks them all off. Given the lower voltage, the USBs can be turned on by default (with an option to turn off, the opposite of the 240V sockets) and unlike the 240V sockets they're not all linked on a circuit so if one goes off the rest aren't affected (from what I understand, with limited electrical knowledge!)

The sockets on the Volvo B9s always used to work (as a semi-regular user of the 56 when the B9s replaced the L94s) and were supposed to be checked again when they first got repainted/refurbished. I noticed a couple of years ago that Arriva started to replace some of their 240v three-pin sockets with USBs, but didn't ever seem to finish them.

From the testing on the 240v sockets on the StreetDecks and B5s, it seems that the inverters they use are majorly underpowered for the application.

It seems that a load over 150W is enough to 'trip' the power, even spread out over multiple sockets.

I get that it isn't powerful enough to do silly things like plug in toasters and kettles, but with phones now coming as standard with 20-30W+ chargers in the box, it doesn't take much for the power to cut off.

They also don't seem to be pure sine wave inverters as my USB chargers don't play nicely with them at all.

The 30W charger that came with my phone seems to max out at ~10W on the bus.

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