IEC 60906-1

IEC 60906-1 (IEC designation "Type N") is an international standard designed "to provide a standard for a safe, compact and practical 16 A 250 V AC system of plugs and socket-outlets that could be accepted by many countries as their national standard, even if not in the near future." The standard was originally published by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1986; the current edition is ed2.0 published in 2009. Although it is almost identical to the Swiss SN 441011 T12 plug for 10 A 250 V a.c. standardized in 1937, its dimensions are slightly different and its polarization is flipped. (If the IEC 60906-1 socket has the protective/earth conductor at the top, the live conductor is on the right and the neutral one is on the left.)

As of March 2025, only South Africa and Paraguay have introduced standards based closely on IEC 60906-1, and only in South Africa the installation of sockets of this type has become mandatory. Brazil used it as the basis for its NBR 14136 standard, but this is not fully compatible with IEC 60906-1. In 2017 the European Union (EU) published recommendations advising against the harmonization of domestic plug and socket systems in the EU.