In article ,
"ARW" writes:
wrote in message
...

If the load were balanced completely there will be no current on the neutral
conductor. In practice there will be current on the neutral conductor but it
should not exceed the current on a single phase - it would take a very odd
inductive load to do that.

Like a long row of HID streetlamps running along a motorway.
(3rd harmonic adds in 3-phase neutral, rather than canceling out.)

Like pikeys pinching a bit of copper that they think is an earth when it is
a neutral on a three phase supply.

Some years back, a kid got into a substation at the end of a 275kV
overhead line, and thought it would be OK to unbolt the earth wires
coupling the last pylon to ground. It seems that as the last one was
unbolted, the pylon floated up to many kV above earth, and fried him.
So real earth wires are not safe to disconnect either.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]