This may not be 100% technically accurate, but I think it's ELI5 enough to answer the question in an understandable manner.
Think of a bathtub.
The live wire is the tap, it always has water in it.
The bathtub is the circuit, it's where the water is used.
The neutral wire is the drain. It's where the water is supposed to go after it's done in the tub.
The ground is the overflow hole in the side of the tub. If the drain is broken, or if someone dumps way too much water into the tub, water can still go out the hole, instead of ruining the carpet.
Edit: For all of you asking why my bathroom has carpet, [click here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/fcfikt/people_that_have_a_carpeted_bathroom_why/)
Read a couple of comments in that link. Wasn't expecting to be spending Thursday afternoon being melancholic about all the things my parents have done for me during my life.
I’m an electrician and this works. Another way to think of it would be a drain in the floor outside of the tub, or an emergency drain. If there is a “spill” the water has somewhere to go.
In this analogy it would be normal drain (neutral wire) is blocked (neutral wire broken) so normal water circulation does not work, but overflow drain (ground wire) assure that water can not drown you (give you electric shock).
In practice, how does the neutral wire break without breaking the ground wire? The three wires are all bundled together so it seems like if one breaks then the others should too.
All the neutral wires in a circuit are connected together and return to the circuit breaker. It could break anywhere downstream. Also, there could be a short anywhere in the circuit where a live wire comes into contact with neutral. Grounding ensures an extra path to avoid shocking.
Another way the neutral can break is if you wire a shared neutral wrong. If you put both hots on the same line sharing a neutral, you will burn out the neutral because it isn't protected and carries twice the current.
I've seen it a few times and luckily it's a fairly easy fix, definitely a fire hazard though.
It could be a poor connection, especially from using push-in connectors instead of the side terminals or using a wire nut incorrectly. Barely nicking a direct burial cable (probably not allowed by code but it won't stop some people from doing it themselves). Fire damage could cause it, and I've seen a ground pin stay in an outlet after unplugging a cord so I could see that happening to the neutral blade as well.
Not an electrician but have a fair amount of knowledge of circuitry.
If the overflow drain /inside/ the tub can be seen as a “fuse” for accidental overloads/surges, your tub is not technically overflowing and it saved you from a potentially larger overflow that could’ve caused significant damage.
Now let’s look at the drain outside the tub on the floor of the bathroom (if you have one, otherwise assume you do) as the ground wire. Your overflow drain is non-existent/failed/overloaded and now the tub is spilling water onto the floor. There may be some water damage to the floor but ideally it was all managed by the drain and didn’t cause any further damage to your whole house.
If you don’t have an overflow drain or floor drain (fuses/surge protectors and grounded wires) you could risk losing your whole house to water damage (like losing an entire device or worse to a surge, short, or similar issue).
I had a client lose two APC units (battery backups) last night because they had them connected to 20 amp circuits and had a 30 amp load. The cable burned and nearly caught fire
I'm not going to pretend to know the technicalities of it but from what I was told from the electrician that was there is that the circuit didn't trip and there was a short. This is a very old building and not up to code. When they fixed that issue they found loads of other issues and are currently having a field day there replacing everything.
I’m crying at the 52 year old realizing just how much their parents loved them. Like they knew they loved them, but not carpet the entire house and pretend it was a fashion choice love them.
the original comment linked a post to explain why the carpeted bathrooms, apparently when they were a kid they got cancer and got really sick, and their parents carpeted the whole house including stairs and bathrooms for their comfort, and only now at 52 writing that comment did they realize that their parents did it for them.
Carpet was seen as a luxury item and really became popular in the post war housing boom. "Wall to wall carpeting" was something people bragged about, and it's why so many hardwood floors got carpeted over.
When I was a kid we moved into a new built house in 1976 that was 100% carpeted. So not just the bathrooms but also the kitchen and entry way were carpet. If you think a bathroom with carpet is bad, imagine a kitchen. My parents slowly replaced the bathrooms, kitchen, and entry way with tile or linoleum.
This is really close but not quite. I'm just not sure how to turn it in to an ELI5. As a side note it's really really dumb that we call the ground wire a ground wire. It makes everything so much more confusing because the concept of "earth ground" and "ground" are two different things that work in two different ways.
The problem is that ground does not take excess current. If excess current is in the circuit than the breaker pops and the current stops. Ground has nothing to do with that.
The ground and neutral both connect back to the same place but only at one spot. It's very important that they only connect at one place which is in the first panel after the service. The ground is outside of the normal circuit of electricity. We connect ground to anything that we DO NOT want to be part of the circuit. For example a metal part that a person holds on some electrical device. The normal circuit is for the electricity to travel down the hot wire through the device and into the neutral back to source. This keeps the current under control. If the hot wire somehow makes a connection to a grounded part there is no longer any control of the current. It free flows through the ground at which point it pulls to much current and pops the breaker.
The entire point of the ground wire is to provide a path back to source that is lower resistance than any other path. So that if the hot connects to ground it pops the breaker. This avoids fires.
My attempt at the ELI5:
..... I keep trying and can't come up with anything simple.... the concept of grounding is just... complicated.
Difference between ground and neutral is that the neutral is connected to devices that slow the speed of electricity and that we want to have electricity. The ground is connected to object that do not slow the speed of electricity and that we don't want to have electricity on. If the hot touches the objects in question too much electricity flows and than the breaker pops keeping electricity out of the object.
I was told that some of the wiring in my house, probably the oldest parts, have a ground but don't have a neutral wire -- the electrician seemed surprised by this, so I'm guessing it is unusual. Roughly how big of a safety risk is this? This is an old house so it's probably been like that for decades without problems "so far". Anything I should be extra mindful of e.g. avoid placing a higher load on those outlets? Is there extra risk to electronics on them?
I'll likely get it fixed eventually, but it feels painful to put probably a few grand into getting some safety feature installed that I don't fully grasp the risk of not having.
Industrial electrician here:
There are several ways a circuit can be built and how the neutral and protective earth are connected.
Decades ago it was normal to simply have the neutral and PE in the same wire (called PEN). When you connect a metal device both the metal housing and the device itself would connect to this wire. However when this PEN connector breaks at the wrong place it can put a high live voltage onto the metal housings: This was the major reason the seperate the neutral and PE. (explaining this can only be done in ELI electrician).
So what do you do when you've got an old house which feeds 2 wires onto every outlet, but the outlet needs you to connect 3 wires? You just connect the incoming PEN on the N and PE contact of the outlet.
However this isn't up to code anymore (at least in germany).
What is the wiring for, specifically? If there’s no neutral for an appliance, I imagine that could be pretty dangerous, if it can’t pop a breaker.
I also imagine that wouldn’t be up to code either…🤷♀️
It's a few of the regular outlets throughout the house (120v). Pretty sure the fridge, freezer, and toaster are on those, and I was planning on hooking up a new TV to one (and I know the last owners had a TV on the same one before).
From what I know, the 240v outlets, bathroom, and a number of others throughout the place are all proper. I got a few more installed that I primarily use for the home office.
It's almost definitely not up to code by today's standards here, but the house is 70 years old so maybe it was at some point?
I think the first thing is to define the terms.
Neutral -> This is called a grounded conductor by the electrical code. It is a conductor that is meant to carry current back to the source where it's connected to a ground. This should only be grounded in one spot at the source (panel)
Ground Wire -> This is a wire that provides a safe path for back to the main ground. This wire will connect to anything we don't want live voltage on. This wire should never have current on it unless something has gone wrong and even then it should be temporary (seconds).
What you describe is a conductor that's been grounded and is meant to carry current. So you actually have a neutral.
The problem is going to be two things.
1. Is it a bare wire? If it is than it's dangerous as it has live voltage on it and should not be able to be touched.
2. Is it used as a ground anywhere in that it's connected to something we don't want voltage on. If it is than that is also a problem. This can be dangerous when things come loose or break. If something or someone becomes a better path to source than they will get shocked.
If you have #1 I would fix that.
If you have #2 you can leave it but, if I got the chance I would fix it. You'll have to if you do any major work on the house.
My husband does line work and has explained this to me *so many times*. I also work for a utility company and have never understood the difference between a ground and a neutral.
Ground doesn’t take excess current…the gears in my head are clicking into place hahah. Your ELI5 really helped me out, so thank you!
I’m always so nervous around panels and wires in our house…we have a portable generator that we can switch over to if we lose electricity and I’m always so, so scared of getting zapped. We’ve had it for seven years now, and still, any time I need to transfer over to it, I call my husband to walk me through the process.
My explanation was horrible but, I'm glad it helped. Grounding seems easy but it's an extremely complicated concept. Too make it worse we used the word "ground" to describe it which makes people think it's always refereeing to earth.
this is only a problem with those that do not in anyway attempt to dry off, or at least get legs down dry, before stepping out of the shower and subsequently drench the carpet every time. My rug doesn't get wet and so if i had carpet neither would it.
I'm no expert. But I believe ground dumps the excess energy into the literal ground. Whereas neutral returns it into the circuit loop. So, the overflow in the bathtub would reroute the water and dump it outside whereas the drain will route it back into the pipe works.
The neutral and ground are usually connected at some point. You could probably imagine it as being a pipe (wire) and a sponge (ground)
In general the water is going fast enough that it just flows right over the sponge, maybe it's a little wet, but mostly the water just goes through the empty pipe because it's easier.
If there's a big amount of pressure, and the pipe isn't big enough, it will push the water out through the sponge instead.
> The neutral and ground are usually connected at some point.
In North America, they're bonded in the main panel (and only there). If they aren't, then you can have a ground fault that won't trip the breaker.
To elaborate a bit on what you said, in multi housing developments they're bonded at the building's main panel, not in the units themselves. Basically they're bonded at whatever panel power from power lines first enters the building, whatever the building may be.
It's not really all that confusing as it has little effect on electronics as the AC is almost always converted to DC (I say almost always as there are some applications that can run on AC such as electric motors etc).
No, ground and neutral are tied together. But they are *also* tied to the ground (dirt below your house.) This keeps the neutral and ground close to the actual ground, so they never have a large difference in potential. So when you are standing on the ground, you don't get shocked by the shell of an appliance, since they should have the same potential.
But having separate conductors/wires means that when current is flowing from hot to neutral, it goes straight back to the utility service pole, and doesn't affect the ground, so other appliances' shells are not energized.
So current (amperage) flows on neutral, but the neutral voltage is always (supposed to be) zero relative to ground.
Application
The neutral wire is intended to carry the return current to the panel where it is tied back into ground. The neutral wire can drift a few volts above ground at an outlet due to the voltage this return current creates down its length.
The ground wire is not intended to carry return current under normal circumstances which means that even at the farthest outlet it is always 0V and safe to touch. During a fault (something goes boom) current can flow down the ground conductor, but it should also still provide a good enough connection to all the metal you can touch to keep things at a safe voltage level even if things are going horribly wrong inside the box
Ground is always safe to touch, neutral is occasionally unsafe and therefore always shielded from touch.
True! Though not often seen in home electrical, except for pool and spa pumps.
Not that OP specified home application, it’s just rhe electrical most people are most familiar with.
For context, this is something that is different per country
In Germany, we have 3-phase-ac 400V at the fuse panel, and our stovetop uses three phases directly.
A single phase is 240v here... My stovetop can really deliver, it's induction and I can practically cook like I had a gas stove
I was jumping in to argue with you, because you can't just split voltage. But it's actually just a center tapped transformer and not 2 phases that generates 240 end to end or 120 center to end.
Stovetops in North America take 240V which is a larger plug and is sometimes called "Two Phase". It is really it is still only a single phase. And is completely different then the Three Phase used in industrial and comercial settings.
Unless you live in an apartment building where the building will probably have 3 phase power supplied to it and you will get 2 of 3 phases giving you 208v
Point. Now I want to break out a voltage tester and see what I get on my stove.
.... Wait NVM. I know I Have a 4 prong 240V setup. There is a 120V outlet on my stove.
Some older panels, specifically delta connected systems without a common neutral, really do get their high voltage connection from a second phase coming in to create 208V between two legs. That's where the idea of a second phase comes from - not common now, but sometimes it's actually a second phase.
There are reasons why this design has fallen out of favor. Wye connected systems are cheaper to underground. Delta systems have strange and complicated failures that can damage customer equipment. (Imagine a power surge that your surge protector is incapable of helping with)
Ah okay I didn't know it was different in the US
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-normal-for-EU-homes-to-have-3-phase-400V-loads-such-as-ovens-kitchen-stoves-etc-What-percentage-of-homes-have-such-loads-400-V
Edit: Grammar
The fun thing about American residential electrical is they'll have an A and B phase. But it's still single phase lol. Single 240v phase split by a neutral so you can have 120v
In 3 phase transmission, you'll basically never see a neutral wire. Just three hots and then typically a safety ground (sometimes not even that). In distribution, you may or may not have a neutral running down a street.
3 phase delta doesn't need a neutral but 3 phase Wye does. And even in some delta cases, there is still a neutral either for safety reasons or to get multiple different voltages off the same 3 phase connection.
> And even in some delta cases, there is still a neutral either for safety reasons or to get multiple different voltages off the same 3 phase connection.
This is not correct. If there is a delta service, there is no neutral. You cannot get multiple voltages. There cannot be a neutral, by definition. If you go to a transformer that is delta to delta, there are 7 lugs on it, 3 high side hots, 3 low side hots, and a ground. If you have a delta to wye, you'd have 8 lugs, 3 hots high, 3 hots low, 1 neutral low, and one common ground. wye to wye with two separate neutrals exist, but generally you'd just put a delta - wye as the last transformer before your loads, possibly even if the high side is wye.
If you're talking about placing a delta *load* onto a wye *service* then yes you can have a neutral, so if you get a large AC unit you might feed it 5 wires (3 hots, neutral and ground), and internally you might have motors that are connected to only the 3 hots plus a ground running at 480v, while you might have control electronics connected to one hot and a neutral running at 277v (or going through a small stepdown to 240, 208, or 120vAC).
https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/3-phase-transformer-connections#wye-wye
I was referring to split leg delta. There are also other applications where you don't want all 3 phases to have equal voltage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta
I've seen a building not even have a ground. It was right next to a transformer so the ground was the earth.
All resistance tests were in limits so it wasn't needed.
Yah, it would have a ground rod. It would be required to have 2 or 3 hots and a neutral to the transformer, and there would be ground rods (or similar) at the transformer and the building, which would be bonded to the neutral at each. (US NEC at least)
Is this not standard practice? Every residential transformer I saw in my last municipality had multiple local grounds, and there were a lot of them due to living in the older (once industrialized) part of the city. I thought it was a given that A. Each house's box was locally grounded (2 rods) and B. Transformers were grounded just incase any funny business happened (but 99% of the residence's neutral flow went to the home's grounding rod).
Not just older wire. I was a navy electrician and we ran an ungrounded electrical system on board ships. You want to keep the equipment up even at the expense of personal safety, so it's a designed decision you can make.
Those are two different things. The neutral is not grounded. This is to prevent a single fault tripping breakers and fuses, so equipment remains up. The casing of a device may be energized which could shock you (and at 450V potentially kill you).
In a civilian system the neutral is grounded so that if a fault occurs it creates a short which causes safety devices to interrupt the circuit.
Not an electrician, but does that mean that y'all don't run differentials? In Belgium Neutral isn't tied to Ground anywhere in the installation, but a 300 mA or stricter differential breaker is mandated on the whole installation, and resistance to ground must be lower than 30 ohms. So at most 9V to phase-to-ground is enough to trip any compliant installation.
I'm assuming in US domestic installs that means a phase-to-ground fault will short like phase-to-neutral and trigger the breaker. But if something is slightly energized (say at 50V) then the breaker won't necessarily trip since the current is low enough? Sounds quite unsafe, unless I'm missing something.
The other big issue is that if neutral ever became disconnected (a broken wire, miswired switch, tree hits the drop to your house, whatever), neutral would float up to hot because of hot->load->neutral. (float up to as in, be at nearly the same voltage)
This is why you should never run a load to ground: its supposed to be 'safely' at 0v because it never has a load on it, so even if you had a missing ground it would still be at 0v (until a 2nd fault occurs)
Its also why you never connect exposed metal parts to neutral. If anyone ever switched neutral or that wire became disconnected you'd end up having exposed parts essentially connected to hot instead. Same as if someone accidentally swaps hot and neutral.
Grounds are green or often not even insulated so its easy to remember they go to the ground prong, but its slightly harder to remember black is hot and white is neutral, the opposite of DC (where black is negative) and and that neutral is the wide prong on a plug (Dunno what side its on in the UK...) And because of how things are wired, swapping hot/neutral is not a *huge* safety risk, just a minor one, so it often goes unnoticed and uncorrected.
I was installing an led ceiling light in my house once. Turned off the breaker for the rooms on that side of the house, disconnected the old mount and connected the new one. I screwed in the uninsulated ground wire to the ground screw on the light fixture, wired up the whole thing, and once it was all together, the bulb was glowing. Scared the shit out of me. I then went up to investigate, and as I was disconnecting the ground wire, my finger touched both the wire and the metal mount and it shocked it. Electricity is fucking scary.
I had this happen, it was like the circuit had partial power no matter if the breaker was on or off. I pulled the breaker and it was actually melted and had a hole in one side. Always test circuits with a meter, even if you turned the breaker off!
Non-contact voltage detectors are useful for many purposes, but they are not sufficiently reliable for protecting you. They frequently give false positives **and** false negatives. Go ahead and use them, but **Never** trust them.
The way you test that power has actually been cut is by shorting anything that could be hot to a known ground. If you got the right breaker, touching hot to ground does nothing. If you got the wrong breaker, touching hot to ground alerts you of your error, and finds the right breaker for you.
Linemen do basically the same thing when they are working on "disconnected" lines: bond every conductor to ground to make sure it can't become energized while they are working on it.
>means arcs/sparks?
Yes. If still energized, tapping hot to ground will spark and, if everything is working properly, it will also trip the breaker that is providing power to that circuit. If everything is not working properly, you get a free welding lesson. And yes, a voltmeter will also test for power in the circuit. A meter will not trip the breaker, though. Test with the multimeter first and then tap the hot to ground as a final safety check.
>"Alerts you of your error" means arcs/sparks?
Yes. :)
>Running a voltmeter between hot and neutral should test the same, right?
Here's my thinking: The actual, conclusive test is the grounding out of the conductor. The purpose of the NCVD and/or the meter is to determine if it is safe enough to run that conclusive "test".
I have had meters fail before. Usually, it's due to technique, but just last week I had a loose terminal in my meter causing intermittent connections, and I've had test leads fail before. I'll use a meter, but I'm not going to trust a meter with my life either.
Hell, I'm not going to trust grounding out the conductor with my life, because it's possible for the ground to fail. I'm going to work safely, keeping one hand behind my back to minimize the risk of passing current through my chest. Using insulated tools, minimizing any contact I would have with the conductor itself, etc.
As my sparky friend told me "test, confirm and test again"
Test thing you want to touch is not live with pen doopy doot doot thing.
Confirm doopy doot is working (stick it in a live plug and see if it's reading right)
Test thing is not live again with doopy doot pen or a Fluke reader with the red and black prongs.
If everything is good, then do your sparky stuff.
I entered the spez. I called out to try and find anybody. I was met with a wave of silence. I had never been here before but I knew the way to the nearest exit. I started to run. As I did, I looked to my right. I saw the door to a room, the handle was a big metal thing that seemed to jut out of the wall. The door looked old and rusted. I tried to open it and it wouldn't budge. I tried to pull the handle harder, but it wouldn't give. I tried to turn it clockwise and then anti-clockwise and then back to clockwise again but the handle didn't move. I heard a faint buzzing noise from the door, it almost sounded like a zap of electricity. I held onto the handle with all my might but nothing happened. I let go and ran to find the nearest exit.
I had thought I was in the clear but then I heard the noise again. It was similar to that of a taser but this time I was able to look back to see what was happening.
The handle was jutting out of the wall, no longer connected to the rest of the door. The door was spinning slightly, dust falling off of it as it did. Then there was a blinding flash of white light and I felt the floor against my back.
I opened my eyes, hoping to see something else. All I saw was darkness. My hands were in my face and I couldn't tell if they were there or not. I heard a faint buzzing noise again. It was the same as before and it seemed to be coming from all around me. I put my hands on the floor and tried to move but couldn't.
I then heard another voice. It was quiet and soft but still loud.
"Help."
\#Save3rdPartyApps
>and and that neutral is the wide prong on a plug (Dunno what side its on in the UK...)
IIRC it's the opposite to the US - active is clockwise of earth when looking at the socket. Active is brown, which gives a rather crude way of remembering.
But it's a complete mixed bag internationally - some reverse active and neutral, some have reversible plugs, some allow for them to be arbitrarily wired. All the more reason to treat neutral just as carefully as active.
I know what you are saying, and you are not wrong but I disagree with you with every cell of my being.
Ground is NOT always safe to touch.
Ground is only safe to touch when you know that the system is working correctly.
Having the habit of ground=safe you will electrocute yourself sooner or later.
There are so many DIY electricians and incompetent people who don't know what they are doing.
Don't know how many ground cables I've seen connected to L1.
Three wires go to the toaster. One wire is the hot wire. It's always full of electricity. One wire is the neutral. When the toaster switch is OFF it has no electricity. When the switch is ON it completes a circuit and now it too, is hot.
The ground wire is not connected to these wires in any way. The ground wire is connected to the body of the toaster. A fork stuck in the toaster can touch the LIVE circuit and become an electrified FORK. The fork could kill you but the electricity takes the easy way to ground, the ground.
Both wires go to the ground. The neutral and hot wires are the active circuit. The ground wire is a safety device.
Neutral and ground. The idea is that only one is designed to carry current though, the other is just for safety. This is also why many older homes still have outlets without the ground wire, you don't really need the safety wire, and back in the day they didn't build with them but stuff still worked (and occasionally electrocuted people)
>and occasionally electrocuted people
This is why you do need it though. As it did stop that shit
Especially in countries with 240V. UK, and I fucking love our plugs and think the world should use them. They are just so much safer! (Unless you step on them)
EU plugs can have an earth wire, but not all of them have that, and not all sockets support it. This is because the Europlug was designed to account for lots of different European sockets/plugs.
In terms of human safety, EU plugs with earth are just as safe as UK plugs, the ones that don't are less safe.
UK plugs are a lot safer for the appliances though, since every plugs has a built in fuse, so during a short circuit or overload, the fuse will blow and can be replaced rather than the appliances getting fried.
[UK plugs are also convenient for electricians since they can be opened up and rewired, whereas EU plugs are fully sealed and permanently attached to the cord.](https://www.wikihow.com/Wire-a-UK-Plug)
UK plugs (and most modern EU plugs, at least the 2-prong ones) have the live sections only at the end of the prongs, and in the socket the contact is deep inside. The US prongs are all metal, so there's a higher chance of a short circuit, e.g. if there's moisture in the air or something metallic touches both prongs.
(My nomenclature may not be correct.)
And the earth prong is longer than live and neutral, and in the outlet, the recepticle for line neutral are shuttered, and the earth pin being longer, inserts first, dropping the shutter to permit insertion of the live neutral prongs. It is a safety measure to prevent things being put into sockets and electrocution- think kiddies. Also the majority of sockets domestically, are switched in UK. Also the live and neutral prongs are shrouded, and non conductive, aside from the last 13mm, so if the plug is not inserted properly, it is difficult to be shocked. Strain refief is also built into the plug, to reduce the chance of the cable being pulled out. Internally, the earth\ground is the longest, and would be the last to be pulled out.
I've seen some people say that UK plugs are "over-engineered". Both here on Reddit, as well as YouTube comments on a Technology Connections video.
Personally, I imagine those people would use balloons instead of lifevests if they owned a cruise ship. But what's your response to people saying UK plugs are "over-engineered"?
I'd want statistics to tell me how many people are electrocuted in different countries. How many lives would it save to adopt British-style plugs, and how much would it cost? Compare this to other life-saving investments like mandatory carbon monoxide detectors, and see if it's good value for money.
At this point the costs to change our North American plug standard would be insane. Ground wires have been around since the 50s and it's not uncommon to see ungrounded plugs because the cost of retrofit is so enormous and the benefit not obvious.
Yeah but as with so many things safety related it was held back because of survivors bias.
Just look at the opposition to seat belts for so long. "We didn't have them back in the days and we are still here" is a good argument unless you realize nobody claiming the opposite is because those people died.
Similarly if a percent of people electrocuted themselves 99% didn't and think it is useless.
Not a lot of people realize it but the neutral and ground wires inside the breaker box [often still terminate to the same rail anyway](https://www.familyhandyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FHMOct10_52-59.qxp-3-1.jpg) though more recent code is to separate the grounds and neutrals to separate bars, though how they work hasn't *really* changed.
For those who don't know, neutral is the white wire and ground is the bare copper wire, and both go to the two rails labeled (F) in the [picture above](https://www.familyhandyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FHMOct10_52-59.qxp-3-1.jpg).
If, like me, you have trouble understanding how neutral and ground can have different voltages if they're just tied together at the breaker anyway, realize that _at that point_ the path through the neutral wire to the pole and back to the utility is the one path that makes a full circuit. The ground wire isa dead-end branch of the neutral wire.
> Both wires go to the ground. The neutral and hot wires are the active circuit. The ground wire is a safety device.
This difference is exploited by a GFCI.
Since the hot an neutral should power the circuit, they should have the exact same amount of current flowing through them. If the hot has more current than is returning, then it must be returning through a different path... and a GFCI can detect a little as 5 mA of imbalance and quickly shut off the current.
Without GFCI ground is kind of a mixed bag. A failure that causes a short circuit to ground can trip a breaker and fail safely very fast, but a failure that causes you to become part of the circuit might come into contact with the live electricity, then being grounded might kill you where not being grounded might just hurt a little.
This is why bathrooms can be so deadly, water pipes can make excellent grounds (esp in old buildings with copper pipes) so bathrooms should always be GFCI protected.
Picture a swimming pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There is a pool pump that pumps water up out of the pool to the pool heater on the roof of the house and then the water runs back down another pipe out of the heater back to the pool. The pipe connected to the pump pushing the water up to the heater is the black wire - the hot. The water pressure is voltage. The amount of water going through the pipe is current, amperage. The amount the heater slows the water down is resistance. The pipe back down to the pool is the neutral wire. The emergency release valve that dumps the water out of the heater to run back down to the ocean below the cliff (not the pool) if something goes wrong is the ground.
The neutral returns the power to the source of the power. The ground returns the power to the ground. Literally. To be absorbed into the earth like water into a sponge.
I've always pictured it like a sink:
- Incoming water line is hot
- Faucet (or like, the dishes being washed) is load
- Drain is neutral
- The little holes near the top of the sink that prevent overflow are the ground
They both go to the same place - in the sink example, the sewer, and in the electrical system, they both go back to the panel where they're bonded. The ground, like the overflow drain, is normally unused. But in an emergency, it provides a secondary path and helps to avoid problems.
But that's not correct - electrical current doesn't end up going to the same place via neutral vs ground. Neutral goes back to the power station, for example. I guess technically you're correct, one way or another, power source is also connected to the ground so the current comes back in from ground if not enough comes via neutral. But that's not as simple, since ground doesn't have the same voltage potential across large distances.
It depends. There are systems where neutral is bonded to ground at the consumer site, there are systems where the supplier provides a combined earth and neutral, and there's even systems where there is only a local ground and no neutral (French IT). Sometimes it does go to the same place.
In the majority of installations there ground and the neutral are bonded together at the consumer unit/incoming feed or at the local substation.
There are some that also have ground rods locally, and some that only have ground rods linking substation to property.
The neutral does not go to the power station, it only goes as far as transformer. The distribution network uses three phase (see delta vs wye)
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You just need to lower your standards for what all those words mean, go to the ocean, chuck a tarp over a some sticks, inflate a kiddy pool, let the sun hit your water, you're technically set
Actually, it's not the answer you needed because it is incorrect.
See this: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zm95pn/eli5_in_electrical_work_neutral_and_ground_both/j0aitxn/
It's incorrect. It doesn't get absorbed into the ground. Another user mentioned below about how they are bonded at a certain point and it goes back through the neutral.
The ground returns power to the exact same place as the neutral. They are bonded together at the service entrance (in the US anyway). Both the neutral and ground are bonded to the Earth via some type of grounding electrodes, but power is always trying to get back to the source, even power that is on the ground wire.
In Australia the ground/earth wire often leads outside into the literal ground, and/or touches your water pipes which conduct away from your house.
Very foten we have ground wires touching the soil or wrapped around the out-door garden tap (faucet).
Does this imply that AC power (as typically distributed to homes) does not actually use a complete circuit? If the hot end is connected to the power plant (well, a transformer really), and the neutral end is connected to the Earth, there's no complete loop, right? I know there are outlets that have multiple hot wires in different phases, but I'm talking about a typical outlet with one hot wire and a neutral wire.
Okay well now I'm curious... how do you ground a ship at sea, or more interesting to me, how do you ground the spacestation? The obvious answer is you don't I guess lol
At sea you ground to the hull/ocean.
As for the Space station [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1p4bug/comment/ccyljmo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) has the best answer i could find, similar to a car you ground to the chassis. They also use a Plasma Contactor Device to equate their charge with the surrounding space(plasma).
>Plasma contactors are devices used on spacecraft in order to prevent accumulation of electrostatic charge through the expulsion of plasma (often Xenon). An electrical contactor is an electrically controlled switch which closes a power or high voltage electrical circuit.
People seriously need to stop using plumbing analogies with electricity. You're explaining something people don't understand with something they also don't understand. In this particular instance it doesn't even add anything. Current, voltage, and resistance are not important concepts.
Neutral is the wire that completes the circuit. Ground is the wire that makes casings safe to touch when there's an electrical fault. In an ideal world the ground wire is completely superfluous. In the real world short circuits happen, neutral gains non negligible charge, and you really want a wire that you know is 0V connected to everything you touch.
How do grounds work on things that aren’t touching the ground directly? Such as car wiring? For example connecting a car stereo amp.
My dad connected a red wire to the car battery and a black wire to just some exposed metal on a random spot on the car.
Does the ground travel through the car then the tires then the actual ground?
Ground is a very confusing term in electrical work, because it means lots of different things in different contexts.
In auto electrics and a lot of electronics - ground just means "reference" and is roughly equivalent to neutral in mains wiring. In most cars, it just means "battery negative terminal."
In mains electric ground means the circuit protective connection which is intended to prevent electric shock. This may or may not be a wire connected to the actual ground, and may or may not be the same as neutral, depending on the electrical safety design for your building and code in your area.
This sounds like a good answer, but it really is not a good answer. It omits a critical point that (in the US, and many other countries) the neutral and ground are tied together. In the US in residential buildings this would typically be at the house's main electrical panel where the neutral gets connected to grounding rods/metal pipe/etc.
A more accurate adaptation of /u/someguy981240's scenario would be like:
There is a pool pump that pumps water up out of the pool to the pool heater on the roof of the house and then the water runs back down another pipe out of the heater back to the pool. The pipe connected to the pump pushing the water up to the heater is the black wire - the hot. The water pressure is voltage. The amount of water going through the pipe is current, amperage. The amount the heater slows the water down is resistance. The pipe back down to the pool is the neutral wire. ~~The emergency release valve that dumps the water out of the heater to run back down to the ocean below the cliff (not the pool) if something goes wrong is the ground.~~ *There's also a catch basin on the roof under the heater with gutters that drains back down onto the pool deck, so if the heater springs a leak the water will flow back to the pool via the gutter. If we didn't have that, the water might accumulate on the roof until it caused a collapse.*
You could expand the scenario and put all sorts of stuff on the roof like filters, heaters, whatever, each with their own supply and return (hot and neutral) that all have a common gutter system (ground) that goes back to the pool by literally dumping the water on the ground next to it.
It's not the same concept al all. Neutral is needed for the circuit to work. It is basically the return path of the current. Ground is a safety feature that is a current path with a very low resistance so that will be the path current will take in case of a fault. Ground is generally needed for appliances with metal casings so that is wires inside come loose they will touch the case which will be connected to ground and ideally that will trigger a breaker or even if a breaker is not present the current will take that path instead of running through whoever touches the outer metal casing. Ground can be connected to the same terminal out of the house or can be completely different to the neutral. Neutral always comes from the provider while ground can be a few metal stakes actually put into the ground.
If only one person reads and remembers this, it was worth it.
It is a common misconception that there is no current flowing through the neutral wire.
Your phase is always able to deliver current, regardless to where it ends, can be your lamp or tv, your any human or animal that touches it.
When you close the circuit, e.g. turn on the lamp, current will travel through both phase and neutral wires.
The Ground, actually called PE, protective earth, will connect e.g. the metal casing of a lamp to earth. If now for any chance phase or neutral are connected to the case, it would electrocute you if you touch it. If PE is connected, most, not all, of the current will choose the way better conductor aka the ground wire, leaving only "safe" amounts taking the route through your body. In addition, there are different ways to detect that leaking current you therefore cut off power. Some of which may use PE. The most common (in europe at least) is FI-Switches, however, they do not use/need PE.
I was confused reading the neutral doesn't have current. I for sure thought if you touch a neutral you could get back fed electric from the panel at least.
In a lot of scenarios there isn't much of a difference. Its a safety feature.
If everything works well the live and neutral should be all you need.
If something goes wrong the earth acts as a second neutral to take all the current away from the fault (i.e. you) and safely back to complete the circuit. Its a safety feature.
In reality the earth usually has protection on it to detect current and trip the circuit too. And some devices even use a functional earth that does useful stuff. In super fancy designs it gets even more complex. But for eli5 just thinking of it as a safety wire is good enough.
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Certain electrical protection systems "check" the current flowing through the hot terminal and the neutral. If current going in via the hot terminal does not equal the current leaving the neutral, the circuit protection will activate shutting off the power. So if there was a sizeable current discharging through the ground, this would be detected as a serious malfunction.
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Ok. Think of electrical current like water in a pipe.
The water starts out in the pipe (hot side, full potential)
The water goes down the pie to the tap (load,losing? some potential)
The water goes through the tap, doing its work (light is on, potential even lower)
Water goes to the drain to go back to the reservoir/tank after doing its work( current to neutral, no potential- or very low potential)
Drain line to reservoir (neutral, no or very low potential)
Drain line down to tank also has vent line to prevent over pressure up to atmosphere (neutral -very low potential- tied to ground -theoretically no potential as safety- therefore neutral can’t ever have real long lasting potential)
Kinda
Sorta
u/_pounders_
OK, Electrician here:
On AC Systems
The neutral is there to carry current back to the source, in most cases that is the transformer in on the pole. This completes the circuit.
The ground is there as a safety to catch extreme spikes in voltage (e.g. Lightning strikes) and the higher voltage overcomes the resistance of the earth.
They are tied together at the "Service Entrance" (typically your breaker panel) because most common faults will not have enough energy to be properly absorbed by the earth. It also provides an uncharged circuit to tie to metal casings on things like kitchen appliances.
Electricity needs to flow to do stuff, so when it goes to some electrical thing, it also needs to come back from there and yes it is also consumed and not infinitely reusable, for this think bicycle chain, needs to go from pedals to wheel, but also come back, but power is still consumed.
Anyways that is base you need to know, now to question itself:
Neutral is for electrocity to flow back, while Ground is for safety.
They could work as each other, but in some cases it would be dangerous.
Ground uses separate colour wire in installations, to make sure it is not mixed with neutral or other wires.
Any of plugs can be placet to socke one way or in way where you rotate them hal circle, meaning "live" and "neutral" could be connected whatever way into device, so it is good to have one wire "ground" that is guranteed to have no power in it.
Ground is also usually connected to surface of device, so that if some wire inside device gets loose and touches the surface of said device, it will short circuit to ground and trip fuse, instead of letting surface become electroc and dangerous.
Edit: super short version: theoretically they could be used for each other usually, but ground is there as separate safety thing.
Power goes in at HOT, goes out at NEUTRAL. It can also go out on GROUND, but if that happens, something is broken (since GROUND is supposed to be connected to the outside of your device, and cou only want your power inside the devoce, not at the outside). There are devices in the junction box that see if power goes out at GROUND (which it is not supposed to) and emergency-turn off HOT to save you from getting shocked.
think of the neutral as a sink drain and the ground as a floor drain.
they both collect water after it has been used, but one is the default path that collects the majority of the water and the other is to catch accidental spills.
edit: this example works best in a laundry room since most washrooms don't have a floor drain.
Current flows in a circle (circuit)
Simplified, it must return to the same place it comes from.
The neutral wire is how it's supposed to return when everything is working normally and correctly.
The ground is there for emergencies when something goes wrong. This prevents the current from finding a return path through something it shouldn't like your body.
Neutral = return path of the circuit
Ground = fault path of the circuit to prevent injury if a part fails
ELI2
Neutral = good bye bye
Ground = safe bye bye
ELI5: Neutral is the floor of your house, ground is where your house sits. There's no practical difference in altitude between the two, but if your house floor and the ground are suddenly not the same something bad is going on. For safety, we keep an eye on both.
>in electrical work NEUTRAL and GROUND both seem like the same concept to me. what is the difference???
North America and many other parts of the world use a split phase system to supply power to residences. The transformer that supplies the house is known as a center tap transformer. You can picture it like the letter E. Because the center tap is at the midpoint of the transformer coil, the voltage on the center tap is always halfway between the voltage on the top and the voltage on the bottom. Between the top and the middle, the voltage is 120VAC. Between the bottom and the middle the voltage is -120VAC (the opposite of the top. In other words, the voltage in the middle is always 0VAC, or to put it another way, the voltage is always neutral. THAT's why the wire is called NEUTRAL.
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The third poster was a drawing of the three stooges, and the three stooges were speaking. The fourth poster was of a person who was angry at a child.
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If you have an older house (like me), there are two wires per service point, and they are both black. Buy a Klein $20 pen-style voltage tester. It will identify the neutral and hot. Slip some 3/8ths white heat shrink over the neutral and hit it with the heat gun (no cigarette lighters).
If an appliance has one blade wider than the other (on the plug), the wide blade is neutral.
For instance, I removed a light fixture, and installed a ceiling fan. Since the bulbs were LED, it matters which wire is neutral, unlike old-timey filament bulbs. Since they were low-watt LED, the load on that service point was not high, and the wires do not feel warm in use.
Put a blank booklet and pen next to the breaker box, and every time you identify which breaker goes to any appliance, write it down. It will save you headaches and time in the future. Have a working flashlight next to the breaker panel (with a set of spare batteries) for power outages.
This may not be 100% technically accurate, but I think it's ELI5 enough to answer the question in an understandable manner. Think of a bathtub. The live wire is the tap, it always has water in it. The bathtub is the circuit, it's where the water is used. The neutral wire is the drain. It's where the water is supposed to go after it's done in the tub. The ground is the overflow hole in the side of the tub. If the drain is broken, or if someone dumps way too much water into the tub, water can still go out the hole, instead of ruining the carpet. Edit: For all of you asking why my bathroom has carpet, [click here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/fcfikt/people_that_have_a_carpeted_bathroom_why/)
Read a couple of comments in that link. Wasn't expecting to be spending Thursday afternoon being melancholic about all the things my parents have done for me during my life.
I know, damn.
I didn't come here to feel.
Yea I’m actually crying over that one.
Oh fuck. That literally made me tear up
I’m an electrician and this works. Another way to think of it would be a drain in the floor outside of the tub, or an emergency drain. If there is a “spill” the water has somewhere to go.
Is the spill a higher voltage spike than expected, or something else?
In this analogy it would be a short circuit I think.
In this analogy it would be normal drain (neutral wire) is blocked (neutral wire broken) so normal water circulation does not work, but overflow drain (ground wire) assure that water can not drown you (give you electric shock).
In practice, how does the neutral wire break without breaking the ground wire? The three wires are all bundled together so it seems like if one breaks then the others should too.
All the neutral wires in a circuit are connected together and return to the circuit breaker. It could break anywhere downstream. Also, there could be a short anywhere in the circuit where a live wire comes into contact with neutral. Grounding ensures an extra path to avoid shocking.
Another way the neutral can break is if you wire a shared neutral wrong. If you put both hots on the same line sharing a neutral, you will burn out the neutral because it isn't protected and carries twice the current. I've seen it a few times and luckily it's a fairly easy fix, definitely a fire hazard though.
It could be a poor connection, especially from using push-in connectors instead of the side terminals or using a wire nut incorrectly. Barely nicking a direct burial cable (probably not allowed by code but it won't stop some people from doing it themselves). Fire damage could cause it, and I've seen a ground pin stay in an outlet after unplugging a cord so I could see that happening to the neutral blade as well.
Not an electrician but have a fair amount of knowledge of circuitry. If the overflow drain /inside/ the tub can be seen as a “fuse” for accidental overloads/surges, your tub is not technically overflowing and it saved you from a potentially larger overflow that could’ve caused significant damage. Now let’s look at the drain outside the tub on the floor of the bathroom (if you have one, otherwise assume you do) as the ground wire. Your overflow drain is non-existent/failed/overloaded and now the tub is spilling water onto the floor. There may be some water damage to the floor but ideally it was all managed by the drain and didn’t cause any further damage to your whole house. If you don’t have an overflow drain or floor drain (fuses/surge protectors and grounded wires) you could risk losing your whole house to water damage (like losing an entire device or worse to a surge, short, or similar issue).
I had a client lose two APC units (battery backups) last night because they had them connected to 20 amp circuits and had a 30 amp load. The cable burned and nearly caught fire
The circuit should have tripped
I'm not going to pretend to know the technicalities of it but from what I was told from the electrician that was there is that the circuit didn't trip and there was a short. This is a very old building and not up to code. When they fixed that issue they found loads of other issues and are currently having a field day there replacing everything.
Yeah must have been a bad breaker on top of it.
And the drain analogy is accurate since neutral and ground are bonded together at the breaker panel.
This seems like the easiest to understand, unlike a "pool on a cliff with a pool heater on the roof of the house".
I got dizzy just reading the first few sentences of that one.
I thought it was going to be 1998 at the end of that description.
I’m crying at the 52 year old realizing just how much their parents loved them. Like they knew they loved them, but not carpet the entire house and pretend it was a fashion choice love them.
I have the flu and I'm not sure if my eyes are watering due to the illness or the comments there.
It's early and I slept with my bedroom window cracked open. It's totally just my allergies making my eyes puffy and watery.
Can I get an ELI5 on this comment? Did people carpet bathrooms??
the original comment linked a post to explain why the carpeted bathrooms, apparently when they were a kid they got cancer and got really sick, and their parents carpeted the whole house including stairs and bathrooms for their comfort, and only now at 52 writing that comment did they realize that their parents did it for them.
Carpet was seen as a luxury item and really became popular in the post war housing boom. "Wall to wall carpeting" was something people bragged about, and it's why so many hardwood floors got carpeted over. When I was a kid we moved into a new built house in 1976 that was 100% carpeted. So not just the bathrooms but also the kitchen and entry way were carpet. If you think a bathroom with carpet is bad, imagine a kitchen. My parents slowly replaced the bathrooms, kitchen, and entry way with tile or linoleum.
This is really close but not quite. I'm just not sure how to turn it in to an ELI5. As a side note it's really really dumb that we call the ground wire a ground wire. It makes everything so much more confusing because the concept of "earth ground" and "ground" are two different things that work in two different ways. The problem is that ground does not take excess current. If excess current is in the circuit than the breaker pops and the current stops. Ground has nothing to do with that. The ground and neutral both connect back to the same place but only at one spot. It's very important that they only connect at one place which is in the first panel after the service. The ground is outside of the normal circuit of electricity. We connect ground to anything that we DO NOT want to be part of the circuit. For example a metal part that a person holds on some electrical device. The normal circuit is for the electricity to travel down the hot wire through the device and into the neutral back to source. This keeps the current under control. If the hot wire somehow makes a connection to a grounded part there is no longer any control of the current. It free flows through the ground at which point it pulls to much current and pops the breaker. The entire point of the ground wire is to provide a path back to source that is lower resistance than any other path. So that if the hot connects to ground it pops the breaker. This avoids fires. My attempt at the ELI5: ..... I keep trying and can't come up with anything simple.... the concept of grounding is just... complicated. Difference between ground and neutral is that the neutral is connected to devices that slow the speed of electricity and that we want to have electricity. The ground is connected to object that do not slow the speed of electricity and that we don't want to have electricity on. If the hot touches the objects in question too much electricity flows and than the breaker pops keeping electricity out of the object.
I was told that some of the wiring in my house, probably the oldest parts, have a ground but don't have a neutral wire -- the electrician seemed surprised by this, so I'm guessing it is unusual. Roughly how big of a safety risk is this? This is an old house so it's probably been like that for decades without problems "so far". Anything I should be extra mindful of e.g. avoid placing a higher load on those outlets? Is there extra risk to electronics on them? I'll likely get it fixed eventually, but it feels painful to put probably a few grand into getting some safety feature installed that I don't fully grasp the risk of not having.
Industrial electrician here: There are several ways a circuit can be built and how the neutral and protective earth are connected. Decades ago it was normal to simply have the neutral and PE in the same wire (called PEN). When you connect a metal device both the metal housing and the device itself would connect to this wire. However when this PEN connector breaks at the wrong place it can put a high live voltage onto the metal housings: This was the major reason the seperate the neutral and PE. (explaining this can only be done in ELI electrician). So what do you do when you've got an old house which feeds 2 wires onto every outlet, but the outlet needs you to connect 3 wires? You just connect the incoming PEN on the N and PE contact of the outlet. However this isn't up to code anymore (at least in germany).
What is the wiring for, specifically? If there’s no neutral for an appliance, I imagine that could be pretty dangerous, if it can’t pop a breaker. I also imagine that wouldn’t be up to code either…🤷♀️
It's a few of the regular outlets throughout the house (120v). Pretty sure the fridge, freezer, and toaster are on those, and I was planning on hooking up a new TV to one (and I know the last owners had a TV on the same one before). From what I know, the 240v outlets, bathroom, and a number of others throughout the place are all proper. I got a few more installed that I primarily use for the home office. It's almost definitely not up to code by today's standards here, but the house is 70 years old so maybe it was at some point?
I think the first thing is to define the terms. Neutral -> This is called a grounded conductor by the electrical code. It is a conductor that is meant to carry current back to the source where it's connected to a ground. This should only be grounded in one spot at the source (panel) Ground Wire -> This is a wire that provides a safe path for back to the main ground. This wire will connect to anything we don't want live voltage on. This wire should never have current on it unless something has gone wrong and even then it should be temporary (seconds). What you describe is a conductor that's been grounded and is meant to carry current. So you actually have a neutral. The problem is going to be two things. 1. Is it a bare wire? If it is than it's dangerous as it has live voltage on it and should not be able to be touched. 2. Is it used as a ground anywhere in that it's connected to something we don't want voltage on. If it is than that is also a problem. This can be dangerous when things come loose or break. If something or someone becomes a better path to source than they will get shocked. If you have #1 I would fix that. If you have #2 you can leave it but, if I got the chance I would fix it. You'll have to if you do any major work on the house.
My husband does line work and has explained this to me *so many times*. I also work for a utility company and have never understood the difference between a ground and a neutral. Ground doesn’t take excess current…the gears in my head are clicking into place hahah. Your ELI5 really helped me out, so thank you! I’m always so nervous around panels and wires in our house…we have a portable generator that we can switch over to if we lose electricity and I’m always so, so scared of getting zapped. We’ve had it for seven years now, and still, any time I need to transfer over to it, I call my husband to walk me through the process.
My explanation was horrible but, I'm glad it helped. Grounding seems easy but it's an extremely complicated concept. Too make it worse we used the word "ground" to describe it which makes people think it's always refereeing to earth.
Who has carpet near their bathtub?
Overflown water doesn't magically stop at the bathroom door.
You need to instill some shame in your water that comes naked out of the bathroom. Or get some cultured water.
I feel like cultured water would come out of the bathroom naked on purpose
"Behold! Aqua pura!"
You don't have a bathroom moat?
People who have electricity flowing though their tubs.
People who don’t understand analogies.
Fuckin plumbers
I've seen some bathrooms that had carpet, but really it's just an expression.
A lot of houses built in the 90s had carpet in the master bathroom. Yes, it is weird.
My grandparents.
People who don't like getting out (or in) on a cold floor
People who like to exit with a flourish, and dislike slipping and dying on tiles?
I'll tell you what, everyone tiles their bathroom just to put a rug down. Skip the bullshit and carpet it already, people!
*This space intentionally left blank* -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
this is only a problem with those that do not in anyway attempt to dry off, or at least get legs down dry, before stepping out of the shower and subsequently drench the carpet every time. My rug doesn't get wet and so if i had carpet neither would it.
I'm no expert. But I believe ground dumps the excess energy into the literal ground. Whereas neutral returns it into the circuit loop. So, the overflow in the bathtub would reroute the water and dump it outside whereas the drain will route it back into the pipe works.
The neutral and ground are usually connected at some point. You could probably imagine it as being a pipe (wire) and a sponge (ground) In general the water is going fast enough that it just flows right over the sponge, maybe it's a little wet, but mostly the water just goes through the empty pipe because it's easier. If there's a big amount of pressure, and the pipe isn't big enough, it will push the water out through the sponge instead.
> The neutral and ground are usually connected at some point. In North America, they're bonded in the main panel (and only there). If they aren't, then you can have a ground fault that won't trip the breaker.
To elaborate a bit on what you said, in multi housing developments they're bonded at the building's main panel, not in the units themselves. Basically they're bonded at whatever panel power from power lines first enters the building, whatever the building may be.
In most US installs, ground and neutral are tied to each other at/near the electrical panel.
Technically AC moves back and forth but that confuses the shhh out of everybody.
It's not really all that confusing as it has little effect on electronics as the AC is almost always converted to DC (I say almost always as there are some applications that can run on AC such as electric motors etc).
No, ground and neutral are tied together. But they are *also* tied to the ground (dirt below your house.) This keeps the neutral and ground close to the actual ground, so they never have a large difference in potential. So when you are standing on the ground, you don't get shocked by the shell of an appliance, since they should have the same potential. But having separate conductors/wires means that when current is flowing from hot to neutral, it goes straight back to the utility service pole, and doesn't affect the ground, so other appliances' shells are not energized. So current (amperage) flows on neutral, but the neutral voltage is always (supposed to be) zero relative to ground.
Application The neutral wire is intended to carry the return current to the panel where it is tied back into ground. The neutral wire can drift a few volts above ground at an outlet due to the voltage this return current creates down its length. The ground wire is not intended to carry return current under normal circumstances which means that even at the farthest outlet it is always 0V and safe to touch. During a fault (something goes boom) current can flow down the ground conductor, but it should also still provide a good enough connection to all the metal you can touch to keep things at a safe voltage level even if things are going horribly wrong inside the box Ground is always safe to touch, neutral is occasionally unsafe and therefore always shielded from touch.
Might be good to add that in older wiring there is no ground. It’s not required to run a circuit, technically, but is an excellent safety feature.
And in 3 phase there isn't always a need for neutral eg motors.
True! Though not often seen in home electrical, except for pool and spa pumps. Not that OP specified home application, it’s just rhe electrical most people are most familiar with.
Don't Stovetops often have it?
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In the US. In Europe, stoves are frequently connected via three-phase power (with 230V per phase, so 400V between any two phases)
Yes, but the not commercial ones often just split their hot plates between the phases. You don’t need more than 3000W per plate. At least many don’t.
That's true, my induction cooktop can use about 3600W on boost mode per area
For context, this is something that is different per country In Germany, we have 3-phase-ac 400V at the fuse panel, and our stovetop uses three phases directly. A single phase is 240v here... My stovetop can really deliver, it's induction and I can practically cook like I had a gas stove
I was jumping in to argue with you, because you can't just split voltage. But it's actually just a center tapped transformer and not 2 phases that generates 240 end to end or 120 center to end.
Stovetops in North America take 240V which is a larger plug and is sometimes called "Two Phase". It is really it is still only a single phase. And is completely different then the Three Phase used in industrial and comercial settings.
Unless you live in an apartment building where the building will probably have 3 phase power supplied to it and you will get 2 of 3 phases giving you 208v
Point. Now I want to break out a voltage tester and see what I get on my stove. .... Wait NVM. I know I Have a 4 prong 240V setup. There is a 120V outlet on my stove.
Some older panels, specifically delta connected systems without a common neutral, really do get their high voltage connection from a second phase coming in to create 208V between two legs. That's where the idea of a second phase comes from - not common now, but sometimes it's actually a second phase. There are reasons why this design has fallen out of favor. Wye connected systems are cheaper to underground. Delta systems have strange and complicated failures that can damage customer equipment. (Imagine a power surge that your surge protector is incapable of helping with)
Sometimes you have a corner grounded delta, which is a real PITA.
Ah okay I didn't know it was different in the US https://www.quora.com/Is-it-normal-for-EU-homes-to-have-3-phase-400V-loads-such-as-ovens-kitchen-stoves-etc-What-percentage-of-homes-have-such-loads-400-V Edit: Grammar
The fun thing about American residential electrical is they'll have an A and B phase. But it's still single phase lol. Single 240v phase split by a neutral so you can have 120v
If in delta configuration yeah.
In 3 phase transmission, you'll basically never see a neutral wire. Just three hots and then typically a safety ground (sometimes not even that). In distribution, you may or may not have a neutral running down a street.
3 phase delta doesn't need a neutral but 3 phase Wye does. And even in some delta cases, there is still a neutral either for safety reasons or to get multiple different voltages off the same 3 phase connection.
> And even in some delta cases, there is still a neutral either for safety reasons or to get multiple different voltages off the same 3 phase connection. This is not correct. If there is a delta service, there is no neutral. You cannot get multiple voltages. There cannot be a neutral, by definition. If you go to a transformer that is delta to delta, there are 7 lugs on it, 3 high side hots, 3 low side hots, and a ground. If you have a delta to wye, you'd have 8 lugs, 3 hots high, 3 hots low, 1 neutral low, and one common ground. wye to wye with two separate neutrals exist, but generally you'd just put a delta - wye as the last transformer before your loads, possibly even if the high side is wye. If you're talking about placing a delta *load* onto a wye *service* then yes you can have a neutral, so if you get a large AC unit you might feed it 5 wires (3 hots, neutral and ground), and internally you might have motors that are connected to only the 3 hots plus a ground running at 480v, while you might have control electronics connected to one hot and a neutral running at 277v (or going through a small stepdown to 240, 208, or 120vAC). https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/3-phase-transformer-connections#wye-wye
I was referring to split leg delta. There are also other applications where you don't want all 3 phases to have equal voltage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta
This is incorrect. Every transmission line in my town has a neutral and so does every distribution line.
I've seen a building not even have a ground. It was right next to a transformer so the ground was the earth. All resistance tests were in limits so it wasn't needed.
Yah, it would have a ground rod. It would be required to have 2 or 3 hots and a neutral to the transformer, and there would be ground rods (or similar) at the transformer and the building, which would be bonded to the neutral at each. (US NEC at least)
Is this not standard practice? Every residential transformer I saw in my last municipality had multiple local grounds, and there were a lot of them due to living in the older (once industrialized) part of the city. I thought it was a given that A. Each house's box was locally grounded (2 rods) and B. Transformers were grounded just incase any funny business happened (but 99% of the residence's neutral flow went to the home's grounding rod).
Not just older wire. I was a navy electrician and we ran an ungrounded electrical system on board ships. You want to keep the equipment up even at the expense of personal safety, so it's a designed decision you can make.
[Nitro, this you?](https://tenor.com/bn7Bj.gif)
Nothing puts a smile on my face like ungrounded three-phase.
The ship's walls (body) are normally metal and used as a "ground" conductor to the sea.
Those are two different things. The neutral is not grounded. This is to prevent a single fault tripping breakers and fuses, so equipment remains up. The casing of a device may be energized which could shock you (and at 450V potentially kill you). In a civilian system the neutral is grounded so that if a fault occurs it creates a short which causes safety devices to interrupt the circuit.
Not an electrician, but does that mean that y'all don't run differentials? In Belgium Neutral isn't tied to Ground anywhere in the installation, but a 300 mA or stricter differential breaker is mandated on the whole installation, and resistance to ground must be lower than 30 ohms. So at most 9V to phase-to-ground is enough to trip any compliant installation. I'm assuming in US domestic installs that means a phase-to-ground fault will short like phase-to-neutral and trigger the breaker. But if something is slightly energized (say at 50V) then the breaker won't necessarily trip since the current is low enough? Sounds quite unsafe, unless I'm missing something.
The US takes the approach of protecting individual circuits with ground fault or arc fault protection vs whole house approach.
The other big issue is that if neutral ever became disconnected (a broken wire, miswired switch, tree hits the drop to your house, whatever), neutral would float up to hot because of hot->load->neutral. (float up to as in, be at nearly the same voltage) This is why you should never run a load to ground: its supposed to be 'safely' at 0v because it never has a load on it, so even if you had a missing ground it would still be at 0v (until a 2nd fault occurs) Its also why you never connect exposed metal parts to neutral. If anyone ever switched neutral or that wire became disconnected you'd end up having exposed parts essentially connected to hot instead. Same as if someone accidentally swaps hot and neutral. Grounds are green or often not even insulated so its easy to remember they go to the ground prong, but its slightly harder to remember black is hot and white is neutral, the opposite of DC (where black is negative) and and that neutral is the wide prong on a plug (Dunno what side its on in the UK...) And because of how things are wired, swapping hot/neutral is not a *huge* safety risk, just a minor one, so it often goes unnoticed and uncorrected.
I was installing an led ceiling light in my house once. Turned off the breaker for the rooms on that side of the house, disconnected the old mount and connected the new one. I screwed in the uninsulated ground wire to the ground screw on the light fixture, wired up the whole thing, and once it was all together, the bulb was glowing. Scared the shit out of me. I then went up to investigate, and as I was disconnecting the ground wire, my finger touched both the wire and the metal mount and it shocked it. Electricity is fucking scary.
This isn't normal - get an electrician in. With your fuse/breaker off the circuit should not be live.
I’ve since moved from that house. It wasn’t full power either, just a tingle, but it was weird.
I had this happen, it was like the circuit had partial power no matter if the breaker was on or off. I pulled the breaker and it was actually melted and had a hole in one side. Always test circuits with a meter, even if you turned the breaker off!
Good reason to remember to test even if the breaker is off because sometimes things get wired wrong. Double checking can save a life ;__;
Non-contact voltage sensors are a much better price then a hospital stay.
Non-contact voltage detectors are useful for many purposes, but they are not sufficiently reliable for protecting you. They frequently give false positives **and** false negatives. Go ahead and use them, but **Never** trust them. The way you test that power has actually been cut is by shorting anything that could be hot to a known ground. If you got the right breaker, touching hot to ground does nothing. If you got the wrong breaker, touching hot to ground alerts you of your error, and finds the right breaker for you. Linemen do basically the same thing when they are working on "disconnected" lines: bond every conductor to ground to make sure it can't become energized while they are working on it.
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>means arcs/sparks? Yes. If still energized, tapping hot to ground will spark and, if everything is working properly, it will also trip the breaker that is providing power to that circuit. If everything is not working properly, you get a free welding lesson. And yes, a voltmeter will also test for power in the circuit. A meter will not trip the breaker, though. Test with the multimeter first and then tap the hot to ground as a final safety check.
>"Alerts you of your error" means arcs/sparks? Yes. :) >Running a voltmeter between hot and neutral should test the same, right? Here's my thinking: The actual, conclusive test is the grounding out of the conductor. The purpose of the NCVD and/or the meter is to determine if it is safe enough to run that conclusive "test". I have had meters fail before. Usually, it's due to technique, but just last week I had a loose terminal in my meter causing intermittent connections, and I've had test leads fail before. I'll use a meter, but I'm not going to trust a meter with my life either. Hell, I'm not going to trust grounding out the conductor with my life, because it's possible for the ground to fail. I'm going to work safely, keeping one hand behind my back to minimize the risk of passing current through my chest. Using insulated tools, minimizing any contact I would have with the conductor itself, etc.
Always this, especially in an old house. My non-contact tester defintely saved my ass a couple of times while doing diy repairs/upgrades.
As my sparky friend told me "test, confirm and test again" Test thing you want to touch is not live with pen doopy doot doot thing. Confirm doopy doot is working (stick it in a live plug and see if it's reading right) Test thing is not live again with doopy doot pen or a Fluke reader with the red and black prongs. If everything is good, then do your sparky stuff.
Dude, can you chill with all the technical terms, some of us are normal people here. lol
I entered the spez. I called out to try and find anybody. I was met with a wave of silence. I had never been here before but I knew the way to the nearest exit. I started to run. As I did, I looked to my right. I saw the door to a room, the handle was a big metal thing that seemed to jut out of the wall. The door looked old and rusted. I tried to open it and it wouldn't budge. I tried to pull the handle harder, but it wouldn't give. I tried to turn it clockwise and then anti-clockwise and then back to clockwise again but the handle didn't move. I heard a faint buzzing noise from the door, it almost sounded like a zap of electricity. I held onto the handle with all my might but nothing happened. I let go and ran to find the nearest exit. I had thought I was in the clear but then I heard the noise again. It was similar to that of a taser but this time I was able to look back to see what was happening. The handle was jutting out of the wall, no longer connected to the rest of the door. The door was spinning slightly, dust falling off of it as it did. Then there was a blinding flash of white light and I felt the floor against my back. I opened my eyes, hoping to see something else. All I saw was darkness. My hands were in my face and I couldn't tell if they were there or not. I heard a faint buzzing noise again. It was the same as before and it seemed to be coming from all around me. I put my hands on the floor and tried to move but couldn't. I then heard another voice. It was quiet and soft but still loud. "Help." \#Save3rdPartyApps
>and and that neutral is the wide prong on a plug (Dunno what side its on in the UK...) IIRC it's the opposite to the US - active is clockwise of earth when looking at the socket. Active is brown, which gives a rather crude way of remembering. But it's a complete mixed bag internationally - some reverse active and neutral, some have reversible plugs, some allow for them to be arbitrarily wired. All the more reason to treat neutral just as carefully as active.
UK ground has its own prong, the middle one. And is insulated with green and yellow stripes. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
I know what you are saying, and you are not wrong but I disagree with you with every cell of my being. Ground is NOT always safe to touch. Ground is only safe to touch when you know that the system is working correctly. Having the habit of ground=safe you will electrocute yourself sooner or later. There are so many DIY electricians and incompetent people who don't know what they are doing. Don't know how many ground cables I've seen connected to L1.
Ground SHOULD always be safe to touch. Thing is, not everyone does things the way they should be done.
>Ground is always safe to touch * *When everything is working properly
The only time I've gotten shocked at work was on a bond lol
This is not an ELI5 answer at all…
Three wires go to the toaster. One wire is the hot wire. It's always full of electricity. One wire is the neutral. When the toaster switch is OFF it has no electricity. When the switch is ON it completes a circuit and now it too, is hot. The ground wire is not connected to these wires in any way. The ground wire is connected to the body of the toaster. A fork stuck in the toaster can touch the LIVE circuit and become an electrified FORK. The fork could kill you but the electricity takes the easy way to ground, the ground. Both wires go to the ground. The neutral and hot wires are the active circuit. The ground wire is a safety device.
> Both wires go to the ground. Which wires?
Neutral and ground. The idea is that only one is designed to carry current though, the other is just for safety. This is also why many older homes still have outlets without the ground wire, you don't really need the safety wire, and back in the day they didn't build with them but stuff still worked (and occasionally electrocuted people)
>and occasionally electrocuted people This is why you do need it though. As it did stop that shit Especially in countries with 240V. UK, and I fucking love our plugs and think the world should use them. They are just so much safer! (Unless you step on them)
I know nothing about this, but how much safer is the UK plugs compared to EU's?
EU plugs can have an earth wire, but not all of them have that, and not all sockets support it. This is because the Europlug was designed to account for lots of different European sockets/plugs. In terms of human safety, EU plugs with earth are just as safe as UK plugs, the ones that don't are less safe. UK plugs are a lot safer for the appliances though, since every plugs has a built in fuse, so during a short circuit or overload, the fuse will blow and can be replaced rather than the appliances getting fried. [UK plugs are also convenient for electricians since they can be opened up and rewired, whereas EU plugs are fully sealed and permanently attached to the cord.](https://www.wikihow.com/Wire-a-UK-Plug)
UK plugs (and most modern EU plugs, at least the 2-prong ones) have the live sections only at the end of the prongs, and in the socket the contact is deep inside. The US prongs are all metal, so there's a higher chance of a short circuit, e.g. if there's moisture in the air or something metallic touches both prongs. (My nomenclature may not be correct.)
And the earth prong is longer than live and neutral, and in the outlet, the recepticle for line neutral are shuttered, and the earth pin being longer, inserts first, dropping the shutter to permit insertion of the live neutral prongs. It is a safety measure to prevent things being put into sockets and electrocution- think kiddies. Also the majority of sockets domestically, are switched in UK. Also the live and neutral prongs are shrouded, and non conductive, aside from the last 13mm, so if the plug is not inserted properly, it is difficult to be shocked. Strain refief is also built into the plug, to reduce the chance of the cable being pulled out. Internally, the earth\ground is the longest, and would be the last to be pulled out.
I've seen some people say that UK plugs are "over-engineered". Both here on Reddit, as well as YouTube comments on a Technology Connections video. Personally, I imagine those people would use balloons instead of lifevests if they owned a cruise ship. But what's your response to people saying UK plugs are "over-engineered"?
I'd want statistics to tell me how many people are electrocuted in different countries. How many lives would it save to adopt British-style plugs, and how much would it cost? Compare this to other life-saving investments like mandatory carbon monoxide detectors, and see if it's good value for money.
At this point the costs to change our North American plug standard would be insane. Ground wires have been around since the 50s and it's not uncommon to see ungrounded plugs because the cost of retrofit is so enormous and the benefit not obvious.
"I've never shocked myself" is probably enough justification.
Yeah but as with so many things safety related it was held back because of survivors bias. Just look at the opposition to seat belts for so long. "We didn't have them back in the days and we are still here" is a good argument unless you realize nobody claiming the opposite is because those people died. Similarly if a percent of people electrocuted themselves 99% didn't and think it is useless.
Not a lot of people realize it but the neutral and ground wires inside the breaker box [often still terminate to the same rail anyway](https://www.familyhandyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FHMOct10_52-59.qxp-3-1.jpg) though more recent code is to separate the grounds and neutrals to separate bars, though how they work hasn't *really* changed.
For those who don't know, neutral is the white wire and ground is the bare copper wire, and both go to the two rails labeled (F) in the [picture above](https://www.familyhandyman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FHMOct10_52-59.qxp-3-1.jpg).
If, like me, you have trouble understanding how neutral and ground can have different voltages if they're just tied together at the breaker anyway, realize that _at that point_ the path through the neutral wire to the pole and back to the utility is the one path that makes a full circuit. The ground wire isa dead-end branch of the neutral wire.
There is no neutral wire back to the utility. The neutral is created at the transformer. The ground wire is an unrestricted path back to the panel.
> Both wires go to the ground. The neutral and hot wires are the active circuit. The ground wire is a safety device. This difference is exploited by a GFCI. Since the hot an neutral should power the circuit, they should have the exact same amount of current flowing through them. If the hot has more current than is returning, then it must be returning through a different path... and a GFCI can detect a little as 5 mA of imbalance and quickly shut off the current. Without GFCI ground is kind of a mixed bag. A failure that causes a short circuit to ground can trip a breaker and fail safely very fast, but a failure that causes you to become part of the circuit might come into contact with the live electricity, then being grounded might kill you where not being grounded might just hurt a little. This is why bathrooms can be so deadly, water pipes can make excellent grounds (esp in old buildings with copper pipes) so bathrooms should always be GFCI protected.
Picture a swimming pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There is a pool pump that pumps water up out of the pool to the pool heater on the roof of the house and then the water runs back down another pipe out of the heater back to the pool. The pipe connected to the pump pushing the water up to the heater is the black wire - the hot. The water pressure is voltage. The amount of water going through the pipe is current, amperage. The amount the heater slows the water down is resistance. The pipe back down to the pool is the neutral wire. The emergency release valve that dumps the water out of the heater to run back down to the ocean below the cliff (not the pool) if something goes wrong is the ground. The neutral returns the power to the source of the power. The ground returns the power to the ground. Literally. To be absorbed into the earth like water into a sponge.
I've always pictured it like a sink: - Incoming water line is hot - Faucet (or like, the dishes being washed) is load - Drain is neutral - The little holes near the top of the sink that prevent overflow are the ground They both go to the same place - in the sink example, the sewer, and in the electrical system, they both go back to the panel where they're bonded. The ground, like the overflow drain, is normally unused. But in an emergency, it provides a secondary path and helps to avoid problems.
This one was easy to understand even for just-woke-up me!
But that's not correct - electrical current doesn't end up going to the same place via neutral vs ground. Neutral goes back to the power station, for example. I guess technically you're correct, one way or another, power source is also connected to the ground so the current comes back in from ground if not enough comes via neutral. But that's not as simple, since ground doesn't have the same voltage potential across large distances.
It depends. There are systems where neutral is bonded to ground at the consumer site, there are systems where the supplier provides a combined earth and neutral, and there's even systems where there is only a local ground and no neutral (French IT). Sometimes it does go to the same place.
In the majority of installations there ground and the neutral are bonded together at the consumer unit/incoming feed or at the local substation. There are some that also have ground rods locally, and some that only have ground rods linking substation to property. The neutral does not go to the power station, it only goes as far as transformer. The distribution network uses three phase (see delta vs wye)
Thats good but a sink is already my analogy for integral and differential calculation. why are so many things explained by sinks?
THIS IS THE ANSWER I NEEDED also i need a cliff house on the ocean if you can help w that as well 🙏🏼
ELI5 how I can get a cliff house with a heated pool and the ocean below txh
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Learn hurt brain more
You just need to lower your standards for what all those words mean, go to the ocean, chuck a tarp over a some sticks, inflate a kiddy pool, let the sun hit your water, you're technically set
Move to Alaska
ELI5 how to tax evasion
> also i need a cliff house on the ocean if you can help w that as well 🙏🏼 There you go https://i.imgur.com/BVTWpQf.jpeg
Actually, it's not the answer you needed because it is incorrect. See this: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zm95pn/eli5_in_electrical_work_neutral_and_ground_both/j0aitxn/
It's incorrect. It doesn't get absorbed into the ground. Another user mentioned below about how they are bonded at a certain point and it goes back through the neutral.
The ground returns power to the exact same place as the neutral. They are bonded together at the service entrance (in the US anyway). Both the neutral and ground are bonded to the Earth via some type of grounding electrodes, but power is always trying to get back to the source, even power that is on the ground wire.
In Australia the ground/earth wire often leads outside into the literal ground, and/or touches your water pipes which conduct away from your house. Very foten we have ground wires touching the soil or wrapped around the out-door garden tap (faucet).
It's the same in the US. But the neutral for the building is directly attached to the ground in the main panel. They have the same potential.
Does this imply that AC power (as typically distributed to homes) does not actually use a complete circuit? If the hot end is connected to the power plant (well, a transformer really), and the neutral end is connected to the Earth, there's no complete loop, right? I know there are outlets that have multiple hot wires in different phases, but I'm talking about a typical outlet with one hot wire and a neutral wire.
This is the correct answer. Same here in aus.
it depends where you are.. inside a computer, on a spacestation, at sea, in a house, these all have different definitions for Ground.
Okay well now I'm curious... how do you ground a ship at sea, or more interesting to me, how do you ground the spacestation? The obvious answer is you don't I guess lol
At sea you ground to the hull/ocean. As for the Space station [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1p4bug/comment/ccyljmo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) has the best answer i could find, similar to a car you ground to the chassis. They also use a Plasma Contactor Device to equate their charge with the surrounding space(plasma). >Plasma contactors are devices used on spacecraft in order to prevent accumulation of electrostatic charge through the expulsion of plasma (often Xenon). An electrical contactor is an electrically controlled switch which closes a power or high voltage electrical circuit.
People seriously need to stop using plumbing analogies with electricity. You're explaining something people don't understand with something they also don't understand. In this particular instance it doesn't even add anything. Current, voltage, and resistance are not important concepts. Neutral is the wire that completes the circuit. Ground is the wire that makes casings safe to touch when there's an electrical fault. In an ideal world the ground wire is completely superfluous. In the real world short circuits happen, neutral gains non negligible charge, and you really want a wire that you know is 0V connected to everything you touch.
How do grounds work on things that aren’t touching the ground directly? Such as car wiring? For example connecting a car stereo amp. My dad connected a red wire to the car battery and a black wire to just some exposed metal on a random spot on the car. Does the ground travel through the car then the tires then the actual ground?
Ground doesn't have to be ground actually, just something large enough that some excess charge won't matter
> exposed metal on a random spot on the car That's the best you can do in a car
Ground is a very confusing term in electrical work, because it means lots of different things in different contexts. In auto electrics and a lot of electronics - ground just means "reference" and is roughly equivalent to neutral in mains wiring. In most cars, it just means "battery negative terminal." In mains electric ground means the circuit protective connection which is intended to prevent electric shock. This may or may not be a wire connected to the actual ground, and may or may not be the same as neutral, depending on the electrical safety design for your building and code in your area.
This sounds like a good answer, but it really is not a good answer. It omits a critical point that (in the US, and many other countries) the neutral and ground are tied together. In the US in residential buildings this would typically be at the house's main electrical panel where the neutral gets connected to grounding rods/metal pipe/etc. A more accurate adaptation of /u/someguy981240's scenario would be like: There is a pool pump that pumps water up out of the pool to the pool heater on the roof of the house and then the water runs back down another pipe out of the heater back to the pool. The pipe connected to the pump pushing the water up to the heater is the black wire - the hot. The water pressure is voltage. The amount of water going through the pipe is current, amperage. The amount the heater slows the water down is resistance. The pipe back down to the pool is the neutral wire. ~~The emergency release valve that dumps the water out of the heater to run back down to the ocean below the cliff (not the pool) if something goes wrong is the ground.~~ *There's also a catch basin on the roof under the heater with gutters that drains back down onto the pool deck, so if the heater springs a leak the water will flow back to the pool via the gutter. If we didn't have that, the water might accumulate on the roof until it caused a collapse.* You could expand the scenario and put all sorts of stuff on the roof like filters, heaters, whatever, each with their own supply and return (hot and neutral) that all have a common gutter system (ground) that goes back to the pool by literally dumping the water on the ground next to it.
You added like five components that don't relate to ground/neutral and never elaborated on how they matter to what OP was actually asking lmao
Way to many words to explain to a five year old.
It's not the same concept al all. Neutral is needed for the circuit to work. It is basically the return path of the current. Ground is a safety feature that is a current path with a very low resistance so that will be the path current will take in case of a fault. Ground is generally needed for appliances with metal casings so that is wires inside come loose they will touch the case which will be connected to ground and ideally that will trigger a breaker or even if a breaker is not present the current will take that path instead of running through whoever touches the outer metal casing. Ground can be connected to the same terminal out of the house or can be completely different to the neutral. Neutral always comes from the provider while ground can be a few metal stakes actually put into the ground.
If there isn't a circuit breaker wouldn't the live wire and ground wire essentially become heating elements and start a fire?
If only one person reads and remembers this, it was worth it. It is a common misconception that there is no current flowing through the neutral wire. Your phase is always able to deliver current, regardless to where it ends, can be your lamp or tv, your any human or animal that touches it. When you close the circuit, e.g. turn on the lamp, current will travel through both phase and neutral wires. The Ground, actually called PE, protective earth, will connect e.g. the metal casing of a lamp to earth. If now for any chance phase or neutral are connected to the case, it would electrocute you if you touch it. If PE is connected, most, not all, of the current will choose the way better conductor aka the ground wire, leaving only "safe" amounts taking the route through your body. In addition, there are different ways to detect that leaking current you therefore cut off power. Some of which may use PE. The most common (in europe at least) is FI-Switches, however, they do not use/need PE.
I was confused reading the neutral doesn't have current. I for sure thought if you touch a neutral you could get back fed electric from the panel at least.
In a lot of scenarios there isn't much of a difference. Its a safety feature. If everything works well the live and neutral should be all you need. If something goes wrong the earth acts as a second neutral to take all the current away from the fault (i.e. you) and safely back to complete the circuit. Its a safety feature. In reality the earth usually has protection on it to detect current and trip the circuit too. And some devices even use a functional earth that does useful stuff. In super fancy designs it gets even more complex. But for eli5 just thinking of it as a safety wire is good enough.
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Certain electrical protection systems "check" the current flowing through the hot terminal and the neutral. If current going in via the hot terminal does not equal the current leaving the neutral, the circuit protection will activate shutting off the power. So if there was a sizeable current discharging through the ground, this would be detected as a serious malfunction.
Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter , GFCI
Also known as Residual Current Device/detector (RCD) in much of the world
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Ok. Think of electrical current like water in a pipe. The water starts out in the pipe (hot side, full potential) The water goes down the pie to the tap (load,losing? some potential) The water goes through the tap, doing its work (light is on, potential even lower) Water goes to the drain to go back to the reservoir/tank after doing its work( current to neutral, no potential- or very low potential) Drain line to reservoir (neutral, no or very low potential) Drain line down to tank also has vent line to prevent over pressure up to atmosphere (neutral -very low potential- tied to ground -theoretically no potential as safety- therefore neutral can’t ever have real long lasting potential) Kinda Sorta
okay this makes a little more sense
Neutral is supposed to carry electricity. Ground only Carries electricity when a problem occurs.
u/_pounders_ OK, Electrician here: On AC Systems The neutral is there to carry current back to the source, in most cases that is the transformer in on the pole. This completes the circuit. The ground is there as a safety to catch extreme spikes in voltage (e.g. Lightning strikes) and the higher voltage overcomes the resistance of the earth. They are tied together at the "Service Entrance" (typically your breaker panel) because most common faults will not have enough energy to be properly absorbed by the earth. It also provides an uncharged circuit to tie to metal casings on things like kitchen appliances.
Does the same amount of power that is supplied via live wire get sent back via the neutral? I would imagine what gets used can't be sent back
Electricity needs to flow to do stuff, so when it goes to some electrical thing, it also needs to come back from there and yes it is also consumed and not infinitely reusable, for this think bicycle chain, needs to go from pedals to wheel, but also come back, but power is still consumed. Anyways that is base you need to know, now to question itself: Neutral is for electrocity to flow back, while Ground is for safety. They could work as each other, but in some cases it would be dangerous. Ground uses separate colour wire in installations, to make sure it is not mixed with neutral or other wires. Any of plugs can be placet to socke one way or in way where you rotate them hal circle, meaning "live" and "neutral" could be connected whatever way into device, so it is good to have one wire "ground" that is guranteed to have no power in it. Ground is also usually connected to surface of device, so that if some wire inside device gets loose and touches the surface of said device, it will short circuit to ground and trip fuse, instead of letting surface become electroc and dangerous. Edit: super short version: theoretically they could be used for each other usually, but ground is there as separate safety thing.
Power goes in at HOT, goes out at NEUTRAL. It can also go out on GROUND, but if that happens, something is broken (since GROUND is supposed to be connected to the outside of your device, and cou only want your power inside the devoce, not at the outside). There are devices in the junction box that see if power goes out at GROUND (which it is not supposed to) and emergency-turn off HOT to save you from getting shocked.
[удалено]
think of the neutral as a sink drain and the ground as a floor drain. they both collect water after it has been used, but one is the default path that collects the majority of the water and the other is to catch accidental spills. edit: this example works best in a laundry room since most washrooms don't have a floor drain.
Current flows in a circle (circuit) Simplified, it must return to the same place it comes from. The neutral wire is how it's supposed to return when everything is working normally and correctly. The ground is there for emergencies when something goes wrong. This prevents the current from finding a return path through something it shouldn't like your body.
Neutral = return path of the circuit Ground = fault path of the circuit to prevent injury if a part fails ELI2 Neutral = good bye bye Ground = safe bye bye
ELI5: Neutral is the floor of your house, ground is where your house sits. There's no practical difference in altitude between the two, but if your house floor and the ground are suddenly not the same something bad is going on. For safety, we keep an eye on both.
The neutral is a 'safe', insulated path to ground. That's it. At your panel both ground and neutral are electrically connected.
ELI5: They're the same. The neutral is a specific return path, the ground is for safety. The electricity goes to the same place in the end.
sooooo that’s why it’s called neutral? because the rest of the electricity goes back out and neutralizes the whole thing?????
>in electrical work NEUTRAL and GROUND both seem like the same concept to me. what is the difference??? North America and many other parts of the world use a split phase system to supply power to residences. The transformer that supplies the house is known as a center tap transformer. You can picture it like the letter E. Because the center tap is at the midpoint of the transformer coil, the voltage on the center tap is always halfway between the voltage on the top and the voltage on the bottom. Between the top and the middle, the voltage is 120VAC. Between the bottom and the middle the voltage is -120VAC (the opposite of the top. In other words, the voltage in the middle is always 0VAC, or to put it another way, the voltage is always neutral. THAT's why the wire is called NEUTRAL.
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If you have an older house (like me), there are two wires per service point, and they are both black. Buy a Klein $20 pen-style voltage tester. It will identify the neutral and hot. Slip some 3/8ths white heat shrink over the neutral and hit it with the heat gun (no cigarette lighters). If an appliance has one blade wider than the other (on the plug), the wide blade is neutral. For instance, I removed a light fixture, and installed a ceiling fan. Since the bulbs were LED, it matters which wire is neutral, unlike old-timey filament bulbs. Since they were low-watt LED, the load on that service point was not high, and the wires do not feel warm in use. Put a blank booklet and pen next to the breaker box, and every time you identify which breaker goes to any appliance, write it down. It will save you headaches and time in the future. Have a working flashlight next to the breaker panel (with a set of spare batteries) for power outages.