Neutral-to-Earth Voltage (NEV), NEC 2020, (44min:40sec) 

One of the only great things about the Internet is the wealth of information that Mike Holt provides, free of charge. Thank you, Mike!

Great discussion Mike. Thanks for all you and your guests work.

Hello Mike. Thank you for putting the Neutral to Earth voltage into perspective. A truly amazing presentation. Thank you.

Thank you for your passion explaining these mostly unknown yet important concepts. And putting it out there for free.

Thanks for this awesome presentation. Now I know how to think about and describe the 10v NEV that I am seeing at my rural location (enough to hurt, but not kill).

Great presentation and explanation of NVE Mike, i really learn how it measured the NEV to a ground referencing the amperage load on equipment house I'm an a fire alarm technician on a growing industry and safety thank you and God bless you all

Mike thanks so much for sharing your vast knowledge of the subject with a smooth articulate confident delivery that makes listening to your classes thoroughly enjoyable.

Crystal clear presentation. Thank you!!

Mike your videos are great. I work for a large utility in NC and I am a protection and control tech. I have a great understanding of electrical fundamentals. It is hard for people to understand step amd touch potential so I understand your explanation.

Mike you've been such a blessing throughout the years...I was first introduced to your books back in 2001 I was on my 2nd year of apprenticeship. May God continue blessing you and your family. 🙏

Mike, you have been an inspiration. I have learned so much about theory from watching your videos. Most amazing, you somehow have made reading National Electric Code fun!

Yo Mike you the man. I went through one of California's most intense apprenticeship programs which included 8000 hours OJT and 200+ books from basic theory to PLCs and everything inbetween. I still am completely lost on a lot of subjects especially grounding/ bonding, and "voltage". Those 2 subjects are the hardest to fully understand in my opinion. Thank you for the content and blessing up my confusion!

Thanks for another great video, Mike. As a utility P.Eng. I've seen both cases over the decades: cause of high NEV on the utility side -- and the customer side. Regardless, it's ALWAYS a good idea for the utility to put its own house in tiptop shape. Avoid finger-pointing. Even if you measure less than 25 ohms at the pole or pad, improve it anyway -- get it down below 5 ohms! It might solve the customer's problem. But even if it doesn't, you're still cutting the step+touch voltage risks to your linemen and the public.

Dear Mike, You are the best teacher on this subject. I use you are a reference over and over in my Ham Radio Videos. As a former Building Inspector, I always learn something new from you and your staff. Ham Radio guys like me often have many pieces of gear amounting to more than $10K. While watching and listening to your video (more than one time) i was finishing a 4KV DC power supply that can deliver 2 amps. I have to deal with ground neutral and the so called RF ground. Keeping each box at the same potential above ground takes a lot of work. Your graphic was very helpful too. Regards, Jim Heath W6LG

I thank God for you mike !

On the overhead Transmission lines you will have the 3 cables carrying your phases plus you will have your static ground on top of the poll and if the Transmission lines run parallel to any railroad tracks or underground piping it will have a mitigation cable to protect anyone working on those by preventing accidental discharge and it also helps prevent corrosion on any underground pipes.

Very interesting for a UK viewer where we do things differently than that! Almost bailed at the god-credit which felt jarring, but I am glad I stayed and it made me think! We have a 3-phase transformer for each area of housing, where the low side neutral is grounded, and 3-phase+N LV runs down every street with houses connected sequentially to one of the three phases and N. Single phase is about 230V but there is about 400V difference between my live and my neighbor's live! If I want temporary 3-phase I can talk nicely to my neighbors both sides and run extension cables.

In the marinas and boats specifically the issue we have there is the galvanic isolation systems which break the safety grounding conductor under normal operating conditions and then allow current to flow if there is a fault. The way they test to make sure that is working properly is to introduce a ground fault every 4 hours on the line. That is the required monitoring system required on newer boats. This however was in direct conflict with the requirement to have GFCI protection on the 30A/50A shore power cords as it would cause those to trip each time. The "fix" to this was you had to disable the monitoring system in the boats. Newer boats then started using ELCIs on their shore power inlets, and did away with the monitoring systems as well, so now there is no way by the average boat owner to know if the system is functioning properly. Our lake is a US Army Corp of Engineers lake and they have the requirement that there is no swimming around the docks to battle this issue, however nobody follows that rule. There are no "private" docks allowed on our lake, but you hear like Lake of the Ozarks with everyone having private docks the amount of accidental electrocutions is high due to very old docks mis-wired and falling apart. And that very well could be the neighbor down a dock or two that has the issue can can cause the harmful issues to exist on your dock. It would be great for a more in depth video on marinas and docks. When I had my boat in the marina I could always tell if my neighbors had electrical issues as my sacrificial anodes would get eaten up pretty quick and have to replace them so it didn't attack all the other metal on underwater on the boat. I would constantly check them and would change them in the water as needed as it was a large boat and you didn't haul it out that often.

Will watch later but I KNOW when knowledge is precious 😌. Thank you fir you invaluable value.

Your explanation is Excellent. I watch your programs from India

Haha, clamp a volt meter to a blade of grass. Your video's a very helpfull Mike, thank you. I've been a power plant operator and they taught me that 25 KV is the max. for powerplant generators. Has to do with air (H2) gaps and arcing over inside the generator. And indeed that grounding and bonding video is a great vid, vieuwed it many times.

Nice job and video like always

Great videos & content Mike . I was working on a facility years back because of workers getting shocked . The neutral grid from the power company substation that was over 1000 feet and across the road was causing our grounding systems to energize and shock the workers on everything that was grounded.

Every video of yours makes me smarter.

Thanks Mike…..Brian…..!

There you go Mike. You just answered 3 more questions. I used to wornder this all the time. Mike Congratulations. Hey mike I tell you I am your fan number 1 believe me.

Dear Mike, I am from Mexico and I really appreciate that you can teach many people. God bless you. I got the ultimate training library 👍🏼👍🏼 it going to be profitable because USMCA agreement 🤝🏼 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽

Medium voltage distribution lines in Europe have only 3 wires used. The neutral at the substation is grounded through a variable inductance( Petersen coil or Bauch transformer). Resonant/ reactance grounding allows the reduction of ground fault current to 5 Amps or less and the line can be in operation under a single fault.

Simply Fantastic. The first minute already sets the success of this class. God Bless you greatly brother.

Well done sir, thank you

I'm so glad you made this video sir

Thanks Mike

thanks mike , 30 years in the trade and nobody has ever explain to me about NEV or the .20v reading , i thought i wasn't getting accurate measurements or the instrument had problems reading very low voltage, i couldn't never understand y i was getting .20 to .22 neutral to earth .

LOVE THIS VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a really excellent explanation of how multipoint grounding works

Great video. Wish I could find the next one!

Anyone viewing this to answer California system is that here the primary on singe phase is delta connected even though it may be a wye system with neutral connected and grounded at the sub. Having it Delta connected, helps with Harmonics.

One of the main purposes for a multipoint ground system in the utility network is protection from lightning strikes.

At one point in time while I was in the military, and doing lineman work, and someone described grounding to earth as NOT bringing the transformers, panel and grounding conductor’s to the earth potential. But bringing the local areas of the earth and grounded items to the potential of the items that were grounded to as near as same. So the multi point grounding is trying to make that neutral and the local grounding at the local earth - as close as they can be to each other. A few hundred feet away - that might have a different voltage potential - and that area would have its own grounding and the ground plane in that area would be the closest it can be due to the grounding in that area.

One issue I think NEV creates is with high magnetic fields in the house. Even with NEV around 1V, the neutrals will be directly connected to ground paths in the house (like pool equipment)...which creates a one-way current of hundreds of mA...which creates AC magnetic fields in the documented unhealthy range of >5mG. If you're far enough away from the circuit wiring carrying this current, then the magnetic field will drop off and not be an issue. For me, the circuit was running in the crawl space under the master bedroom and was subjected to the higher magnetic field during sleep.

So I’m welding in my garage on my small mig welder (120vac) and the utility neutral wire coming from my pole breaks and disconnects. Does my welder stop working? [I’m guessing it will still operate and hopefully my welder isn’t drawing well over the ampacity of my earthing conductor wire. ]

thank you sir for a plesant lessons you have

One more thing the power or utility company can climb the pole where your transformer supply is and check each 120v feed to see if the current is equal .

Mike just an experience we had (we 15 yo boy , my father , and a friend master electrician )were stripping out uor old in preparation install new electrical service. Power wires were cut at the pole ,meter was removed but common/bare wire remained intact . As we were striping out “master cutoff “switch there was a 2’ arc and the whole street went dark. It turned out our house had the only ground on the entire street. In five minutes the electric company had 5 trucks on the street repairing grounds on every pole and house . Luckily no one was injured short of a laundry issue of brown underwear. If i understand you correctly basically all those readings were stray power loses . Now i see why Europe doesn;t use the same ground system as we do theirs seem to be a little safer. Still a bit confusing but i learned some thank you. I viewed a video on emergency/aux generator “grounding “ still sorting that out in my mind.

Hi Mike - you are such an inspiration! Really appreciate your teaching. I am building a 6 inverter off grid system tied to utility for backup battery charging. There is a lot of confusion in the community regarding inverters that bond neutral and earth ground together when in battery mode. Some inverters like the Victron explain when to remove the NEG bond, but others like my EG4 brand do not, and claim any change will void the warranty. I am very concerned about safety as well as equipment protection. If my utility supply panel is NEG bonded and my load panel is not bonded, but tied back to my supply panel, is there any good reason the inverter should connect neutral to earth ground under any mode? Installers have mentioned significant voltage showing on earth ground. Same question applies to a gas generator where the plug ties directly into either panel, the neutral and earth grounds will provide protection back to the generator without the generator needing a NEG bond. Thank you very much for your expertise and explanations. -Jay

Hi Mike! I am new to learning about this, but very interested. It took me a while to get it through my head the difference in the names of these types of grounds. I must have written notes 4 times before it stuck. And I think it stuck correctly finally. I am wondering if there is a reason why the EGC has to be grounded to the GEC? Should it not be sufficient that it's bonded to the neutral at main breaker panel? If there is a GEC at the transformer, then should the GEC for the house system and other remote buildings be located at the respective panels for each building to keep the NEV interference to a minimum? Buildings are 50m apart, but there is 1 building that is less than 5m from the Transformer. I was wondering if there is a way to isolate the EGC and the GEC to prevent the NEV from feeding back into the system? I would think they should be able to be isolated. Maybe I have missed something... ? Still learning! I am learning a lot form your videos and it is very much appreciated!

I have a question.So since commed want neutral in the meter.Do I bond the neutral in the transformer to?Or the meter socket count as 1st point of bonded neutral since is screwed into the enclosure? THANKS MIKE FOR ALL YOUR DEDICATION FOR ALL OF US HERE.GOD BLESS YOU CHEERS FROM CHICAGO

Great!!

I have a chart that shows what Mike is talking about resistance or impedance of the earth depending upon the soil. moist soil (swampy like conditions) has the least resistance; as soil temperatures increase, resistance or impedance decrease; as soil temperatures decrease, resistance decreases. Dry soil offers more resistance and moist soil offers less resistance. At 68 degrees F, the chart shows 7,200 ohm-centimeters; at 23 F, it's 79,000 ohm-centimeters; at 14 F, 330,000 ohm-centimeters. Depending on the soil type: rocky, sandy, clay, shale, all effect the resistance of the ground in relation to grounding electrodes. This is a study done by ABB, who offer grounding and bonding products. They have charts that will show the different soil types and the resistance that you can expect for the type of soil in the area where you have to drive a ground rod or where you. Anyone can look them up and find the same charts.

Thank you.

Whenever I get to a new campground, I check the power pedestal outlet with a voltmeter to verify it is wired correctly. Then after plugged in measure my Converted bus to the pedestal to verify there is no voltage to create a hot skin condition. I need a better voltmeter to measure to the earth. The one I have is cheap and does not go down to tenths of a volt.

Thanks for the videos… Our utility is a 240V 50Hz system. Came here because NEV stays between 70 to 72V. Very worrying, but is this out of acceptable range? At the meter and first building, live-neutral voltage is 244-247V. Then a second building is supplied from the same meter by underground cable that is 180m long. Live-neutral measures 237-244V. Not helping to troubleshoot is the fact that utility supplied only live circuit breaker, so I can’t safely isolate neutral & earth from utility, connect a generator or inverter system and be certain such a large NEV is not a function of a fault inside the building. Any suggestions on dealing with thus?

Greetings from Eastern Europe (Romania)! I'm struggling with this question for years: is there any way to reduce the NEV stray voltage on the consumer side? Like a super low resistance electrodes system(0.5 Ohm or so)? Or the equipotentialisation bonding is the only way to stay safe from risk of NEV electrocution in risky places

cool video. very interesting. i have a question to which i cant find an answer. why do i have anywhere from 2 to 4 VAC when i put one lead into the soil of a house plant and the other lead into the ground of a wall socket? i did this on two different plants.

Praise Jesus !

Was this made before GFI's were introduced ?

I found this interesting but I know I was not the target audience. For some reason I cannot pinpoint where I feel there is missing information in this explanation. I live in the UK but I know that standards for Transmission are "international" so I believe they are the same in the US. After all the concept of electrical distribution was founded in the USA. What you describe is basically the last leg before entering commercial or domestic premises. We appear to part company in standards at that point. 100metres in my case. I believe for the medium and high voltage, etc transmission, it is distributed three phase but in the Delta arrangement, which does not have a neutral conductor. The average voltage across a balanced 3 phase system is 0 volts. High voltage transmission has an earth but no neutral so there is no progressive drop in grounding voltage across its length. The neutral appears when it is transformed from Delta to Wye and the single phases can be picked off from that point. It is regularly argued that the neutral conductors are undersized but that usually comes from the fact that they do not understand 3 phase distribution, where in theory, there is little actual neutral current. At this point we start to see terms like "impedance" (not simply resistance) and "diversity". This is also the reason why broken utility neutrals can be very difficult to locate.

I wish you had explained the reason why those fatalities took place in relation to the video, gone over how 19v could be deadly, left off the multimeter mistake and what does an isolated screw driver jabbed into the ground have to do with your multimeter test? Was the screwdriver wire tied into your grounding system?

Mike, the biggest difference I’ve seen between two bushing and single bushing pots (distribution transformers) is the location of the neutral connection of the primary winding. One style pot (single bushing) ties the neutral end of the primary winding (H2) to the tank grounding lug and the the other style pot (two bushing) runs the neutral end of the primary winding (H2) out through the second bushing on top. The co-ops here use single bushing pots until they build a two (open Y open delta) or three (YY, Y/Delta, Delta/Delta) pot banks. The investor utilities here use two bushing pots on single installations and transformer banks. To myself the two bushing pot is less hazardous to the lineman working on the secondary side……If a lineman cuts the ground lug connection (single bushing) to the system neutral with the transformer energized he exposes himself to a difference in potential between the neutral (pole ground) and the now ungrounded end of the transformer primary winding (which will read at primary system voltage). The two bushing pot ties the neutral connection of the primary winding to the multi-grounded neutral in a configuration with less exposure to the lineman. Thanks for the videos!

Re: Ground Rod code in most states is a 10-foot rod into the ground.

neutral is supposed to be 0 relative to the earth. and we make it 0 by making the ground the same as the neutral side of the transformer. the reason you start to see voltage miles away on the neutral to the ground is because the voltage drop on the neutral (KxIxD) increases, while the ground stays the same. a voltage tester is designed to measure the relative difference between two points. in other words, the neutral miles away from the source, drops volts, while the ground stays the same. so the tester is showing you the difference @mikeHoltNEC please correct me If I'm wrong I don't want to mislead anyone I only want to clarify for myself and others

My take on multiple grounding points on the utility line: If the neutral is open for whatever reason upstream of a distribution transformer, and lets say the phase voltage is 13kV to ground, primary current in transformer becomes 0, voltage on neutral terminal of transformer primary winding is now 13kV to ground. If primary neutral terminal is connected to secondary (240 Volt) neutral, the neutral wire entering a house will now be at 13kV to ground.

Just to refine the description of what happens during a phase to neutral fault: With long distances, there is considerable voltage difference between the substation and the point of fault for a distant fault. There is a drop in the phase, but in addition, there is a drop in the neutral. The neutral is pulled towards the faulted phase voltage. That increases the phase to neutral voltage of the other two phases _at the point of the fault_. The unfaulted phases do not increase (much*) in voltage with relation to the substation. By multi-grounding the neutral, the neutral becomes effectively a very large conductor, so the neutral can't be pulled towards the phase near as much. *really getting into the weeds - there is mutual inductance coupling, and the mutual can act as a transformer to boost the voltage some. But the effect is much smaller than the effect of neutral shift.

❤️, tks for sharing

Mike, What is the behavior of subatomic particles when there is a voltage but no current? I fully understand that if there is no load there will be no current since there is no path for the circuit to close. When we use a phase tester and insert it into the phase receptacle of the electrical outlet, it turns on showing that there is electric potential at that specific point. What do you think that happens with the electrons? are the particles inside the atom polarized or charged with potential energy waiting for a path to flow? I hope you can get my point.

Is a non-contact voltage tester sufficient to test safety of equipment which should be grounded? The low range model of the Klein tester has a threshold of 12V.

About the parallel ground wiring within premise, you explained what the code requires, but why it so requires?

Hi mike. Can you help me out understanding how to tell when a bank is delta or why and how the connections differ from each other Thanks so much

Hello, have a question guys, why would I still read stray voltage inside of pool, even after I turn off the main breaker next to meter box? I turn off all power to the community building and still reading voltage inside of pool, but it is only a certain location of the pool where I’m reading voltage, in my meter it’s reading .36 volts, it tingles a person inside of that pool, any thoughts fellas?

The power of the load is carried through the wires. But, insulated wires on poles can develop substantial static voltage at surprising currents. These could kill you, so the locally isolated utility circuit must be grounded. Secondly, insulators leak current. So, the local circuit must be grounded or the neutral would rise close to line voltage from leakage. Thirdly, transmission lines induce voltages in soil and ungrounded wires. Thus, the need to keep the neutral of the local circuit loop grounded. Right?

In some utility side failure modes, the voltage on the neutral / egc can become quite high. One utility I interned at had a concentric neutral on a single phase submarine cable fail. The island it was feeding had a lot of sand and high resistance in the ground electrodes. Suddenly the multi grounded neutral jumped to about 30-40 volts AC, based on measurements of pole grounds to remote earth. People were complaining of shocks while touching metallic objects that were grounded. In particular, customers were complaining about shocks while standing on the ground in bare feet and touching a water hose spigot. The solution was to run an additional cable as an emergency fix for the neutral, and the longer term plan was to replace the cable altogether. I do find it somewhat alarming that a single point failure can cause dangerous touch voltages that a GFCI won't even help. A similar issue happens if a service neutral fails, with up to 120V ending up on "grounded" metallic objects. It does seem like that issue could be solved by requiring over/under-voltage protection in the main service disconnect that would sense a fault condition where there was, say, 40V on one leg of a single phase service and 200V on the other.

Should the pool heater have a gfci breaker when heater and pool pump are on different branch circuits. Concern being if say electric heater has a low leak how will it be known

Where I have worked the normal transmission voltage is 13.8 kv.

Sorry at 19.50 you start talking about water pipe. You are doing a great job.

Concerning the question as to whether a load on the premises is required to have primary neutral current flow: The primary in the transformer IS a load, regardless of power use on the premises..

Thanks for the info! Where do I find your video on measuring NEV and making those places safe?

When you were talking about GEC. The correct word would be he is at the same potential because the grounds are in contact with the earth the person is standing on. Now like you said if he disconnected the cable to the ground rod and he grabbed each with one hand if there was enough current flowing back on that wire to the ground rod he could die☠ because he is in series.

If there is 2 red wire going to a outlet carrying 240v and the black wires are screwed together in the outlet box and all the copper wires are twisted together and it's not connected to anything is that safe to be like that

Is this the best way to test for proper bonding of pool cages? Ie: voltage to bonding point of pool?

I had a customer call me because they were getting shocked touching light fixtures and brick wall ect. With no load there was 3 - 4 NEV with a load it got as high as 58 NEV. Still trying to figure this on out.

The whole reason why they use double bushing transformers in California is to get rid of primary load NEV. When you connect the primary loads line to line in medium voltage networks there is no need for a neutral, therefore there won't be any NEV. Medium voltage neutrals is something generally only found on the American continent. In the rest of the world where mainly 230 Volts is the standard we don't have neutrals in medium voltage networks. All medium voltage loads are line to line. The neutral is only found in the low voltage networks from the last transformer to the end consumer. So in the low voltage networks we do have NEV but it's usually very low like less than 2 Volts. Just now it's around 5 p.m. local time the NEV is ~1 Volt. Actually the best way to get rid of NEV altogether would be to have all loads line to line even in low voltage networks. The drawback is less flexibility in your low voltage network as there will only be one usable voltage which is the line to line voltage. But it would get rid of all NEV problems and the neutral would just be a dedicated ground conductor all the way to the transformer. But this requires changing all equipment and electrical circuits of consumers to withstand line to line voltage so I don't see this happening any time soon.

Mike does service changes in his suit.🎉

dear mike, please make a video on how to make an effective ground fault current path in a single phase 2 wire system line-ground/neutral system. thanks

Why do you have this video unlisted? It's extremely useful and has accurate information that many do not understand!

I have a tricky multiple choice question, hopefully someone with more knowledge can help me out A White/grey wire in a feeder circuit ________: A)Be bonded or have a circuit breaker B)Is the largest wire in that circuit C)Should not have a voltage to ground My notes: On the main panel, neutral is connected to the bar that is bonded with the panel, the green grounding wire is also connected to the same bar. (so does that mean the answer is A?) In the sub panel, the neutral wire is connected to the neutral bar which is isolated from the metal box with plastic between them, the Green grounding wire is separated and is connected to its own bar that is bonded to the sub panel box. In the circuit that this question applies to, --------- “The neutral wire is going to be sized larger than the Green grounding wire” (But that doesn’t mean it’s the LARGEST in the circuit right? Because the two hot wire could be the same size) --------"The neutral should have no potential difference(voltage) to the ground" (does that mean the answer is C?) (But that doesn’t mean it’s the LARGEST in the circuit right? Because the two hot wire could be the same size)

Hey thanks! I have voltage between Comcast’s CATV cable incoming and my building ground system. Up to 6A AC moves on the CATV cable and the bonding wire from the incoming service coupling to the local ground system. When connected, all the lights in the house go brighter, and the owner has been reporting flicker for years (and has had the same Comcast service for years). When not connected, everything works fine for the 1A (or two or four or six amps?) to flow between a house and the Comcast cable? The customer is at 0.5V ground to ground with the row house next door; and rod, water pipe electrodes and bonding all looks good. I don’t have a megger.

This is the capacitive effect of 2 conductors(the primary neutral and the earth) running parallel to each other and have opposing magnetic fields because the current is moving in opposite directions in them. The lower or closer you have the primary neutral conductor to the earth the greater the capacitive effect. The further away from the substation the greater the capacitive effect. The greater the capacitive effect for a given current the higher the neutral to ground voltage drop.

I honestly expected more from this video this guy knows the code well but does not have electrical theory answers i understand that theory was not the intention of the video but most of the time this guy said " I dont know" Learning electrical theory is crucial in understanding WHY something is safe or not. Following code is good but knowing WHY you are following code is what makes us all safe

Strong possibility that this method has side effects; like during Heavy Winds during Excessive moisture the Stableization of Grounding becomes effected as power becomes interrupted until Ground water clearing to a stable dryness point. When Neutral power becomes redistributed into the power use system!

CA tends to use delta wired transformers (two bushings, primary is connected phase to phase) to avoid high NEV. Because it doesn't rain for most of the year we have a lot of really dry soil that doesn't conduct very well so it is more difficult to keep a neutral return properly at ground potential. Delta means you don't return primary voltage through the neutral at all. Unbalanced loads can cause larger voltage changes to the phases though.

Great explanation. Thanks.

is 2.4-3 NEV in the pool normal

I love Mike's videos, a lot of good information, and no BS (although if I were to nit pick: sometimes the verbiage isn't 100% accurate), however I do feel insulted sometimes. I am not a licensed electrician, but I feel like most people who are, look down at everyone who is not, assuming that they don't understand anything about electricity beyond flipping a breaker, plugging something into a receptacle, or replacing a light bulb, and making fun of people who call it a "light" instead of "luminaire". There are plenty of people with engineering degrees who understand concepts of electricity, probably way beyond many master electricians, but aren't 100% familiar with the code book and its specific lingo, because they just don't use this stuff everyday. I will keep watching Mike's stuff and look for good info on his "for pros only" forum, but it hurts a little bit to realize, that this is such an elitist group that assumes no one without a license is capable of understanding any of this.

Those are guy wires, not guide wires.

Hey Mike: I just watched your NEV video. It was well done and informative. I am a retired Safety Consultant of 30 years and followed the OSHA regulations, the NEC Codes, etc. Toward the end of my career, and noticing how many people have died of electrocutions over the years, I began to doubt the wisdom of Grounding our electical systems, as did many Engineers around the turn of the 19th century when the theory became more of a "political foorball". It is now my belief that the grouinding decision made back then was wrong. Every time we walk outside, we are in constant contact with one leg of the system, and all we have to do to get electrcuted is touch the other leg. If the systems were not referenced to ground, we would have to touch TWO connections to get electricuted. It seems to me that that is a no-brainer. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

hey mike we live in Thailand which has NO defined standards - and terrible awful training - I've decided on my property because it has many concrete bases with steel rebar, to weld and bond all my rebar together provide lightning paths etc, (free ions in concrete) and several connection points, in what is called a Ufer Ground (look it up now), I also provided double rcds, don't forget that computers have filter capacitors connected to the ground wire from each leg so there is always a small current or a BIG one if the capacitor fails and I've got some Ham radio gear too I want to protect it all. BUT, finally I use British MK 3 pin plugs/socktes with "kid finger proof" shutters and plugs with plastic half shafts, you should see the Thai's faces as they can't poke bare wires into my mains supplies. Anyone self building should remember that an earth rod will not be as good as a properly welded togther rebar UFER GROUNDING as the area (sq mm) and reliability (rusting etc) "earth rods" (encased in copper/steel rods) does not compare to sq meters of concrete in your ground.

California retained phase to phase connection far longer than most other places in the US. But they're doing it much less now. Phase to phase is prone to ferroresonance, and the tendency to ferroresonance jumps at the square of the voltage. You can get away with phase to phase below 5kV with little issue. It can be a bit of problem at 12kV (A common voltage in rural California.) At 24.9kV or 34.5kV, forget about trying a phase to phase connection unless it is all three pole disconnection (including zero fuses). Any of the developed areas of California have pretty much gone to 24.9kV and 34.5kV, and the phase to phase connection is gone. It's just not as obvious because it's all in pad mount equipment nowadays.

Some utilities don’t ground their guys on distribution. He is right though every riser pole and every transformer be it underground or overhead will have a down ground. If the pole had lightning arrestors the pole will have a down ground. Typically if it’s just a street light it’s not likely there is a down ground.

No neutral conductor on my neighborhood Pole mounted step down transformers. All of them are GROUNDED , yes at the end of the primary winding. But no such neutral conductor IS OBSERVED? Multi point grounding, yes because all pole mounted transformers are grounded. Please help as can not see this neutral conductor.

Philadelphia area. Multi point grounded system at every transformer pole. Yes, but can not OBSERVE a NEUTRAL conductor from pole to pole. Believe this is telling me the SUBSTATION is using a 3 phase 3 wire distribution system. thank you