Diverted Neutral Current Demonstration - Normal, Open CNE, Current Circulation (Part 2) 

Acacia Road......Bananaman reference? God I loved that show as a child! 😊You're a legend and inspiration to us all John. Thanks for the much valued content! Mike.

Lots of time and effort gone into that rig John. Well done.

Just when I thought I'm finally reaching a understanding of why and whats happening. You say "your only scratching the surface and 3 phase is more complex". Excellent demonstration, thank you for your time and effort that goes into making these videos. I've learnt so much from you. Your 1 of the greatest minds in our industry.

I have now watched many of your videos over the last few years and must say that you, sir, are a truly excellent communicator

I’ve been guilty of disconnecting main bonding clamps from pipes in the past, and not giving it a second thought. This has opened my eyes!

I spent over 10 years working on the distribution networks and dropped neutrals caused everything from all electrical appliances in the properties failing (spectacularly if on different phases) to dead livestock, electrocuted Koi carp and several house fires. Great clear and concise video.

This is the best explanation of the topic that I have ever seen. Many thanks for the time and effort making your videos.

Hi John thanks for this video. I work in a quarry and one time after an electrical inspection , it was the next day in fact the asphalt plant operator called and said the plant was acting strange, various things weren’t working and some items had tripped. Anyhow I went up for a look and discovered very strange voltage levels at various points in the electrical panels. I eventually traced the problem which was in a three phase distribution board in the next building. The insurance inspector had disconnected the numeral conductor while testing and he never re-connected it. 🤦‍♂️ As you say the voltages across various circuits varied like crazy. It’s a wonder something didn’t get damaged.

Thanks for this, very informative. Something to point out, even if you don’t have any current on your bonding conductor when disconnected at the time of testing, that’s not to suggest it doesn’t suddenly become live when someone down the road comes back from holiday and switches stuff on! I treat ‘earthing’ conductors as if they are live at all times, easier to respect it than be a victim! Thanks again 👍👍

Perhaps we should all start running on 12V🤔😁 Joking aside you’ve successfully highlighted a very serious problem that will only become more prevalent over time. To truly test for dangerous voltages on disconnected bonding conductors (on a compromised system) we need to reference/ test it to true earth, meaning we need to put a temporary test rod in the ground far enough away form any of the properties in the street!! Who said TNcS was the best earthing arrangement?😃

As a mature sparky, learning doesn’t come easily 🙈 I would like to both thank and congratulate you on your 2 videos on Diverted Neutral Videos 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It explained the subject so, even old “f” like can understand it. All Gas engineers, should be made to watch them! Then they may actually use the lead in their tool bag when they remove meters, instead of a jump lead for their cars! Many Thanks Thomas

Greetings John, another great, clear and concise explanation Also very handy use of transformer ratios to lower the voltage , increase the current but safely show the principles,, Very well presented,,, I bet those lamps were getting hot! Thank you for this!

Had our gas meter removed. The meter guy had a big red "jump lead" to put across the meter during removal!

A very informative demonstration as usual. I only vaguely knew this. Seeing this practical explanation was fist class.

I hope that all's well John. Having learned so much from your RU-vid content I have my fingers crossed that it won't be too long before we hear from you again - your clear explanations and dry humour are much missed! Best wishes from just down the road in Dorchester.

I remember the first time an engineer from our local supply company said "It's all PME now" and thinking do I trust a remote earth connection managed by the DNO? And here we are! Great work as always John. You are an asset to the trade. Thank you.

Excellent video as ever JW, probably an issue that will happen more and more commonly as the network ages and not something electricians are necessarily going to be looking out for, can't wait for the horrifying 3 phase episode :)

People ask me "is there any RU-vid videos I can watch to help me learn about electrical theory?" I say watch John Ward. Very well explained 👏

Very interesting came across this recently when the gas board damaged a supply cable while digging. I have a lovely video sent to me by the gas fitter of the spark on the gas pipe lol

Fantastic video John. I knew the theory, but actually seeing it in a realistic installation, it now all makes perfect sense. Thank you.

Excellent tutorial as always John

Hello Mr John, thank you very much

What a precise and accurate explanation supported by a superb demonstration, much appreciated. The test setup must have been a lot of work! Thank you John.

Excellent demo, as someone else mentioned obviously you have gone to a lot of trouble in order to create a great explanation, many thanks JW!

Hi John, From an old spark from the 60's. An excellent tutorial as usual, you definitely put some work in to that rig for the benefit to others, I applaud you. I often thought of this scenario and tried to visualise that having water and gas pipes buried would act as very effective earthing rods at the same time effectively parallel paths conducting current to the neighbours and also carrying current back to the substation at the same time thus would mitigate the need for a separate earth rod for safety to limit the touch voltage, please correct my if I'm wrong perhaps my 75 year old brain is defective also. I wait with exited anticipation for your next video, your and excellent communicator. Peter.

Very informative. Makes my TT installation feel like a good thing!

Amazing video. I would never have even considered this. you turned the principles in to a clear concise demonstration.

As always JW excellent explanation with the fault paths and great effort on the rig, looking forward to the three phase horror show!

Brilliant rig John! Such a useful and well thought out training aid

Excellent! I look forward to the 3-phase one!

Bloody excellent

Great presentation John and thanks for all the hard work you put into it

Brilliant the way you describe things clearly and in a understandable way , love you videos 👍

thanks for all the hard work you put into that jig. much appreciated as always.

Thanks for the great video and the amount of effort you've put in to build up such a great demo

thanks john this was very helpful and informative. i'm a gas man, electricity is weird. i struggle to get my head around it.

Another good down-to-earth explanation. Thanks, John.

That was a very interesting and informative video John. Thank you.

Another fantastic explanation John on a subject a lot of us don't know enough about. Brilliant work on the demo rig!

Thanks for the effort to build all that, and for explaining it all and putting the videos together. Very informative!

Thank you J.W., excellent video, certainly an eye opener.

Thanks for taking the time to produce this very educational video . Every day is a school day !

This is an eye opener for sure

Brilliant explanation John, very good rig a lot of time and effort put in, well done * * * * *

Excellent tutorial, impressive setup John. Thanks for sharing

Great Video clear visual representation of what can happen

Clear and concise as usual, thanks.

It was a very interesting and educational lecture for us all, so thank you very much for setting it all up in such a brilliant way. 🙏

Great subject explained as simply as possible

Excellent video, helps alot trying to get your head around this. Real world scenario is going to be alot more complex, quite daunting.

This has been very informative. As a ham radio operator the one thing I struggled to understand the most when I took my test was grounding and bonding. I remember learning about the different earthing configurations such as TN-C-S and I remember a situation being explained to me where if you have a really good low impedance RF grounding system you can run into issues where your RF ground ends up sinking current for your neighbours which can lead to an unsafe situation either risk of electric shock or the high currents melting your cables and burning your house down. I believe this is pretty much the exact same scenario but explained much better. My old house was TT a system with it's own ground rod outside which I seem to recall as being much less risky however it was made dangerous by some metal thieves who decided to steal the 8 inches of cable from where it came through the wall to the top of the ground rod so I had to replace that at one point. I now live in a house with a TN-C-S system and after moving in it needed a lot of work on the plumbing and we replaced a section of metal water pipe just after the service entrance with plastic but that was before the bonding so we added a cable to bridge the plastic part but as someone doing a bit of DIY plumbing I had no idea how dangerous that could be.

Incredible opens your eyes to what dangerous situations can arise due to a lost neutral or broken connection

Step by step, methodically explained. It's an excellent training video. Love the shirt too 😊

Thank you John. Your videos are brilliant. All the best.

Wow that’s actually quite scary! Thanks for making this video, definitely something to be aware of 😱

Brilliant video John!!

JW at his best, thanks for your time, effort & expertise in producing this excellent presentation ☘️🇮🇪☘️

Superb teaching 'manner' and speed. RU-vid needs people like you, JW. Thank you.

Thanks John, excellent part1 but your marvelous demo jig shows how complicated diverted neutral currents can be.

Cheers JW great insight into this new electric blind danger - many thanks again 👍

Brilliant content as always. Love the funky shirt. Keep up the great work John!

I watch all your stuff John. Top bannana. Ill be able to self certify soon and truth is these videos are a valuable resource for life long learning.

Excellent video John I could show this to my students. Your rig is superb

Fantastic demonstration, love your videos.

Thank you very much for an interesting demonstration! Great explanation.

Brilliant video as always, cheers John

Great effort John. Great demo. Very difficult to calculate this stuff. So many different scenarios to deal with. Safe working Procedures will be easier to create than trying to calculate whether it's correct or not based on measured values at properties.

Looking forward to your next video. Thanks for this one

Very interesting and well presented. I think this has explained a problem with a friends boiler installation AND a problem with contactless voltage sensors. The boiler had been reinstalled in the loft space. When the gas service technician checked the boiler with his contactless voltage sensor, is flashed and bleeped, as did mine BUT when probed with a DMM NOTHING showed! Just goes to show that all these expensive ELCB's, RCCB's etc are absolutely useless in this fault situation!

Great Video, made me realise that just checking for currents in bonding conductors isn't that informative and disconnecting a bonding conductor is more risky than I thought. So I have learnt something but now feel even more confused about the subject. But it does show that bonding to a pipe that isn't actually connected to real earth substantially increases risk in open pen conditions. Sounds like the only safe way of doing things is to make sure no one is going to touch anything, disconnect and measure voltage to real earth. Given there are about 400 instances of open pen a year, about 0.002% of houses I wonder how many will actually make these checks.

Is John alright? No content for 6 months.

Great rig john great work like always mate

Well done john , Regards antony,Warrington Cheshire..

Highly instructive, thank you.

Brilliant demonstration and rig, a lot of thought and time has went into building what is an excellent experiment. Can only imagine the calculations on a three phase system with say 20 houses, the variables and voltages would be infinite. Reminds me of college exam problems. All the best.

Nice video John, as usually ✌🏼⚡️

Round of applause! Much appreciated

Fantastic rig John

Props to JW for taking his time.

Great demonstration. Thanks.

Superb John thankyou for the effort.

Magnificent content, thank you!

Very nice demonstration 👍

Thanks! great presentation!

Very interesting and very informative.

Well done John !

Good video John. Been an electronic engineer most of my working life so spotting the effects of a broken return connection are second nature. I had considered the effect of a broken neutral here as it has a looped supply, but the water supply is in plastic and there's a galvanic isolator in the incoming gas main so no parallel paths.

Great video from a total legend, thanks John! I’m off to buy a clamp on ammeter 😎👍❤️Update with the new ammeter our 45A instant shower gave rise to around 1A in our bonding conductor, will be interesting to see what happens around peak time 👍.

As a hobbyist electrician/DIY'er, I keep forgetting about the potential alternative return paths in the average installation, so many thanks for the reminder _and_ for explaining the potential dangers these can cause! 👍 One thing that worries me on seeing this - Given I live on a street with TN-C-S fed Economy 7 - Is that the typical earth bonding conductor is only about 5-8mm² cross-section versus the 25mm² tails for line & neutral, so the potential (Sorry! 🙃) for other installations to back-feed their whole neutral through my earth bonding (Which I estimate might fuse at perhaps 100A) if their N fails scares the heck out of me. ⚡🔥😨 There's a part of me that's tempted to install current monitoring coils on some of my bonds just so I can monitor for faults and spot any serious danger signs early enough to raise the alarm. Like you said the mere presence of current in these isn't a concern in itself (I mean; 5A paralleling through my bond isn't likely to cause a serious risk) but if a typical 5A flow suddenly jumped up to 50A and stayed there that might pinpoint some damage elsewhere in the system. ⚠

Very thorough! Thank you ❤

Very informative and interesting video. kudos Sir.

Very Interesting John👍

Fabulous John

Brilliant video

Excellent!

We lost neutral on an expensive piece of equipment running on 3 phase 415V, the smaller loads, i.e. all of the control electronics, were wired between a phase and neutral and some of the medium loads like motors, pumps and fans were running from a different phase to neutral. When the equipment was switched on, the electrical cabinet emitted a great deal of smoke!

👍👍👍Definitely the best explanation of this that I've ever seen! I was thinking about how to set up a demonstration of Diverted Neutral Current in a 3 phase system where only a single phase supply is available to run the demonstration - I think I've worked out a way to get an isolated low voltage 3 phase supply from a single phase input with a reasonable power capacity at reasonable cost - let me know if you're interested. Would be great to demonstrate with safe low voltages some of the weird, wonderful and lethal things that can happen with Diverted Neutral Current in a 3 phase system.

Great video John. Surely this just goes to show that PME systems are shit and supplied because its cheaper. Also reason why its not allowed i believe to supply petrol stations.

Thank you John

Thanks, great explanation