On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 9:20:18 AM UTC-5, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:16:40 -0500, clare wrote:



She is referring to the "safety groun d", not the neutral, or she is

"dumming it down". It IS still used as a ground return on a VERY small

basis in very limitted locations - as SWERT.



heh heh ... rather than supply a reference, another guy also attacked

the credentials of the many references providing, implying, essentially,

that facts taught at a junior college are essentially wrong, simply

because it's not a four-year college.



Claire provided you with reference that talk about grounding power
systems. They don't talk about the earth being used as part of the
power flow path.

And again, ALL your references are straight back to the one
"How stuff works", which has it wrong. Citing the same thing 10
times doesn't make it right.






And, now you bring up SWERT, which also has nothing to do with the

question of typical power distribution in the United States, since

neither you nor I are getting our household power through SWERT.



Good grief. It directly addresses the issue. They talk about using
the earth as a return path in special cases, eg isolated rural areas
in AU. And they give a list of problems with it, why it's the exceptional
case.




Let's keep SWERT out of this because the entire discussion is about

the typical US power distribution system, which is basically how

we're getting the electrons to do this typing at our keyboards.



Fine, so then we're back to you being wrong.




Also, let's not try to prove our points simply by stating that the

reference is wrong because it's from a junior college or that the

answer is simplified so therefore it must be wrong.



The statement the professor made is simplified, but, it's not

untrue because it's simplified.



The class teaches students:

"The power company essentially uses the earth as one of

the wires in the power system. The earth is a pretty good

conductor and it is huge, so it makes a good return path

for electrons."



Where is the link to what the prof actually said? Or is it
like I think it is, that she's just using a link to "How stuff
works?"




Anyway, I'll stop asking for a reference that shows otherwise.



What I'll do is continue to try to understand the typical power

distribution scheme in the United States, with your help.


Look at the Wikipedia animation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power

Case closed.