A good thing about camping in NZ - all caravans have to have a Warrant Of Fitness (WOF) including road worthiness, gas and electrical safety.
You can't get a WOF for a tent, but if you want mains electrical connection by law you must have a proper RCD device in the power lead.
So far, so good.
However MOST of the power leads have the RCD very close to the plug which connects to the site mains. i.e. hanging in mid air outside.
Now I am told (by unreliable sources) that it is considered safest to have the RCD as close to the mains connection as possible. Presumably this guards the cable (outside and in) in case of damage as well as all the appliances connected to the mains inside the tent. I can see some logic in this - if someone runs a lawn mower over the lead you want the power to trip and not have a bare live wire lying on the wet grass.
However the socket is also protected by a trip which looks like the kind you get in modern fuse boxes (I can't see any obvious lettering like RCD on the switched unit).
My main thought is that if you have a problem with a device within the tent which trips the RCD then it will probably be (both Murphy and Sod agree) pitch black and pouring with rain at the time. Most likely blowing a gale as well. In which case my fault finding and diagnosis plan would not include blundering around in the dark and getting soaking wet resetting the RCD as I disconnected and reconnected individual appliances.
In the UK devices such as seem to be used which sit inside the tent and (as far as I can tell) use a normal camping extension lead with the blue plug and socket. Much like the way a caravan or campervan are wired, I think. So the UK does not mandate an external RCD. However the electrical points on the site may be better protected (although they don't look much different). And the UK is behind NZ in mandating safety inspections etc.
So what does the team think? Better to have the RCD as far up the cable as possible or fine to have it in the tent?
Cheers
Dave R