Electrical – How to Use the Ground Wire in 2 Prong Plugs

cord-and-plugelectrical

I bought a new monitor and it comes with a thick power plug but I noticed there's a ground wire dangling but sheathed with hard clear plastic but basically it looks like the image below:

enter image description here

What is the purpose of the ground wire? How should I use it? do I plug the wire in the grounding hole of the socket?

Best Answer

That cord is meant to plug into a Japanese outlet. In Japan, it's common to have two-prong sockets with a separate grounding screw below for devices that need it.

The outlet it was desinged to plug into looks something like this:

Japanese outlet

To use your monitor in the US, simply replace that cord with a standard US computer monitor cord, an IEC C13 - NEMA 5. They're very inexpensive.