On Monday, November 25, 2013 3:13:56 AM UTC-5, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:17:08 +1100, John G wrote:



If you had any understanding of electricity you could understand that

the GROUND is not part of the circuit.

It is there to keep all the parts of the system at the same reference

potential.



Well, I *thought* I understood electricity, in that without a "loop",

there would be no current.



What I *think* is the real answer, albeit it's hard grasp because the

earth itself is so huge, is that there *is* a loop with the power

company.



The loop starts with electrons being pulled from the ground, which

then go over the three hot wires where one of those three hot phases

is sent to your transformer primary, where the second lead of the

transformer primary goes into the ground, which completes the

circuit.

I do want to thank those who responded to my initial question about how the center tap gets referenced to ground.

I think we get sidetracked with the use of phase to mean two different things. What if you put ground on the bottom of the secondary instead of the center? Hee, hee.

But, at the risk of another rabbit hole, electrons don't actually get pulled from ground and sent to your house, unless you have a DC supply. In AC, electrons merely bounce back and forth a short distance, like a millionth of a meter. The wave travels, but not the electrons. IIRC.