On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:00:47 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 9:01:11 AM UTC-5, Danny D'Amico wrote:

On Tue, 26 Nov 2013 08:19:28 -0500, clare wrote:







That is definitely NOT college level electrical engineering. Looks



like a junior college introduction course to me.















I won't go into a discussion of how facts at a junior college are any



different than facts at a high school or university, or even those same



facts at the power company (the references I cited were from industry also),



simply because, I'll lose any argument like that on the net due to the



old adage...







What references from industry? Every "reference" you have that I've

seen uses the same exact verbage from "How stuff works" or is in fact

a direct link back to it. One place that got it wrong, cited 10 times,

doesn't make it right.









And, I'll stop asking for references that state the currents *don't* go



back to the power company transformers through the ground...







I will simply continue to locate, read, and quote sources that explain the



return path for current, back to the power company's transformers.







The more I read, the more I find that this return path is not



straightforward.







Actually it is. See the Wikipedia diagram I gave you a link to twice now:



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



It shows power coming and going on just 3 wires, no planet earth

required. That simple animation shows how it works. Look at that

and tell us why another path is needed.







There are local loops, where the math can get complex, so, I'm trying to



unwind this wye-versus-delta thing as we speak ...







Here's a good starter paper on what those ground paths back to the power



supply transformers looks like that I am still reading with great interest:



www.dataforth.com/catalog/pdf/an108.pdf







That's from a company that makes isolation transformers, so, they're not



"junior college" level, right?



No and there isn't anything there that says power plants use

the earth as a return path. It's all consistent with what

everyone here has been telling you.

The earth is not a power path. Period.