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WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIVE, GROUND AND NEUTRAL



 

Difference between live, ground and neutral
A standard electrical system basically consists of live, neutral and ground. Electric current usually flows from live (also known as the HOT) to neutral (serves as return path for the current flow).



 
A lot of mains powered appliances needs these three wires to work safely but only two of the wires are used when the appliance works properly. These are the live (red) and the neutral (black) wires.

- The Live Wire:
This wire carries current to the appliance at a high voltage. In fact, it is the that carries the 220v AC used by most of our home appliances.

-Neutral wire:
It is the return path for an ac circuit which is supposes to carry current in normal condition. This current may be due to phase imbalance, 3rd or 5th harmonics that is the reason it is expected to carry current under normal condition. The neutral wire completes the circuit and carries current away from the appliance. This wire in essence carries or returns the 220v of the live wire back to the source. It is a wire with zero potential (volt).
Though it serves nothing in the conduction process, but only supports the live wire to maintain its potential through which mainly the current flows into our home.

-Earth wire:
The earth wire (green/yellow) is a safety wire and connects the metal case of the appliance to the earth.
Many a times, electrical and electronics devices/equipment due to physical exertion becomes short, they can even give shocks upon being touched. In such cases, earth wire which is present mostly in every devices and also in the main plug shunts the heavy current to the ground instead of surging through your body, thereby saving you the damage.
Earth wire is used for bypassing the current in case of emergency to the ground.  A Ground represents an electrical path, normally designed to carry fault current when an insulation breakdown occurs within electrical equipment. Connections to the electrical path (Ground) are made convenient for the installation of electrical equipment. Some current will always flow through the ground path. This current will come from a number of normal sources.
Earth wire is normally thicker than live wire and it is usually tied to anything conductive surrounding wiring in order to prevent faults current from passing through the personnel or user of the device
This is the reason every main plug at home have got three insertions, one for live, another one for neutral, and the last one for the earth wire.

Ground is just a reference, think of it as the drain that sucks up all the electricity (as an extremely simplified view). Remember, earth ground is tied to a lot of the metal cases holding your wiring, and then tied to a pole thats several feet deep into the soil.
Also, before I round up, Neutral and Ground are connected together in the distribution panel and note that all neutral are ground but not all ground are neutral!!!


Comments

  1. Prince18 October 2020 at 13:01

    Can ground (earth) be used as neutral?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Micheal Alexander13 December 2020 at 11:45

    Thank you for your articles that you have shared with us. Hopefully you can give the article a good benefit to us. Chicwish

    ReplyDelete
  3. seoservise22 March 2022 at 07:38

    Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here! It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained! 안전놀이터

    ReplyDelete

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