On Fri, 11 Mar 2016 00:36:32 -0000, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 20:09:14 -0000, "Mr Macaw" wrote:

What is this fuss about ground and neutral? They are one and the same here. Neutral is strapped to ground at the transformer.

You have superconductors there? Cool. Here we have voltage drop on our
conductors and the farther you get from the place where the neutral is
bonded, the higher the voltage is on the neutral.

Yeah, it could be something dangerous like 2 volts :-) The wire coming to my house is 300 amps. That thing won't drop much voltage.

Think about it, say it dropped enough to give you a shock (I believe you need 30 volts to even make you feel it) that would mean I'd have 30 volts on neutral with reference to ground. So the voltage drop on the live would be the same. That would mean I'd have 200 volts and 30 volts, a PD of 170 volts. Now they're required by law to provide me with 230 volts +10%/-8%, so anything under 211.6 volts is no good (some equipment wouldn't work, bulbs would be dim etc). 170 is a lot less than 211.6.

I have actually tested the voltage under high load conditions, and it never drops more than about 5 volts (it'll be an equal drop on both conductors) - so I could get a 2.5V shock off neutral - that's less than a lithium torch battery, which I can touch the ends off with wet hands and not even feel it.

--
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