On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 01:20:20 -0500, gfretwell wrote:

There is some incidental current going back through the ground but
there is also a neutral wire on the pole wherever you have wye
distribution.

This PDF, which is all about neutral and ground currents, says
repeatedly there is no current flowing in the neutral for 240V loads;
but that there is, in practice, always some current flowing in the
neutral of 120V loads.
http://www.dataforth.com/catalog/pdf/an108.pdf

However, I never quite understood why or when they use the delta
versus the wye so, I'm reading up on that as we speak.

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/Feed...ree%20Lane.jpg

It's interesting that the neutral is lower than the power in
that I would have expected that ... but ...

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/transformer.jpg

Here, the neutral is *above* the power lines.
I would not have expected that!

They use delta distribution on the long haul lines so there is no real
ground current.

I wish I understood why/when they use delta versus wye.

At the moment, I don't yet understand the effective difference between
the two, other than that to transform the voltage, you need to start with
either one and then use the other on the other side.

But, which one you start with, and which you end up with, always
confused me as to the why... but I'm digging further into that.