On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 9:28:16 AM UTC-5, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:22:27 -0500, clare wrote:



Note the "essentially" - it is not "litterally"



Indeed. The return path to the power company's transformers is complex.



I've found a few references that try to explain it (some of which

are on google books, so I can never tell if you'll see the same

pages that I do).



The math is horrendously complex.



But the summary is simple:

"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."



If you post that same verbage from "How stuff works", one more time,
we're all going to throw up.




Anyway, I'm moving on to trying to understand *why* and *when*

the power companies use the wye versus the delta transformers ...



I'm starting with the *simplified* answer, and then working toward

the key details:

http://www.phaseconverterinfo.com/ph...r_deltawye.htm



"Three-phase power is most commonly provided by the electric

utility in a wye configuration. The main advantage to wye power

is that the phase-to-neutral voltage is equal on all three legs."

Hopeless.