kreed wrote:
You are both right and wrong as in the absence of Neutral line, a lot
of the neutral current (imbalance) would probably flow via your earth
stake back to the transformer neutral or to a neighbours neutral via
their earth stake and while its not a perfect situation, imbalance
probably would not be as bad as you might think ?

Of course, if there is a long run through earth (terra firma) back to
the nearest neutral, the soil is really dry, the earth stake is sub-
standard etc etc it might not work very well.

Sometimes, just to make things really exciting, some of the neutral
current flows over alternate paths to a neighbor's house. These
alternate paths can include things like cable TV shields.