Imagine this scenario: You have a diesel-powered generator on a stand
that is electrically isolated from the ground. Run a wire from the energized slot of an outlet
to an electrode driven into the ground. Don’t connect anything to the ground or neutral slots.
Now imagine starting the generator. What happens? Does current flow from the energized wire into the
ground or not? Your answer depends completely on your mental model of what the earth represents
in an electrical circuit. After all, the idea of a circuit is just an abstraction of some really
complicated electromagnetic processes, and that’s even more true on the grand scale of the power
grid. Grounding is one of the most confusing and misunderstood aspects of the grid, so you
can be pardoned for being a little perplexed. For example, if I run a wire from the
positive side of a battery into the ground, nothing happens. But, when an energized power line falls from a
pole, there’s definitely current flowing into the ground then. Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes
move huge electrical currents into or out of the earth, but my little thought experiment of a
generator connected to a grounding electrode won’t create any current at all. I’ll explain
why in a minute. Even on a electrical diagram, ground is just this magical symbol that hangs off
the circuit willy nilly. But, connections between an electrical circuit and the ground serve quite
a few different and critical purposes. And I have some demonstrations set up in the studio to help
explain. I think you’re going to look at the power grid in a whole new way after this, but just
don’t try these experiments at home. I’m Grady and this is Practical Engineering. In today’s
episode, we’re talking about electrical grounding. Why do we ground electrical circuits in the
first place? Maybe the easiest way to answer that question is to show you what happens when we
don’t. For as much importance as it gets in the electrical code, it might surprise you that it’s
not always such a big deal, and in some cases, can even be beneficial. After all, lots of
small electrical circuits lack a connection to the ground, even if part of the circuit
is literally called, “ground.” In that case, that term really just refers to a common reference
point from which voltages are measured. That’s one thing that can be confusing about voltage: it
doesn’t actually refer to a single wire or trace or location, but the difference in electrical
potentials between two points. For convention, we pick a common reference point, assume it
has zero potential to make the math simple, and call it ground, even if there’s no reference
to the actual ground below our feet. On small, low voltage devices (like battery powered
toys), the difference in potential between components on the circuit board and the
actual earth isn’t all that important, but that’s not true for high voltage systems
connected to the grid. Let me show you why: This is a diagram of a typical power system on
the grid. The coils of a generator are shown on the left. When a magnetic field rotates past
these coils, it generates electric current on the conductors, and (very generally) this is
how we get the three phase AC power that is the backbone of most electric grids today. Look
at nearly any transmission line, and you’ll see three main conductors that (again, very generally)
correspond to this diagram. But what you don’t see here is a connection to ground. Let me put another
diagram underneath where distance is equal to voltage. You can see our three conductors
all have the same phase-to-phase voltage, and they have the same phase-to-ground
voltage too. Everything is balanced. But, in this example, that connection to the ground
isn’t very strong, resulting just from the electromagnetic fields of the alternating
current (called capacitive coupling). Watch what happens during a ground fault.
This could be a tree branch knocking down a power line or a conductor being blown
into contact with a steel tower or any other number of problems that lead to a
short between one phase and ground. Now, all of the sudden, that weak coupling force
keeping the phase-to-ground voltages balanced is overpowered, and all the phases experience a
voltage shift with respect to the ground. But, the phase-to-phase voltages don’t change.
In fact, a ground fault on an ungrounded power system usually doesn’t cause any immediate
problems. The motors and transformers and other loads on the system don’t really care about
the phase-to-ground voltage because they’re hooked up between phases. This is one benefit
of an ungrounded power system: in many cases it can keep working even during a ground fault.
But, of course, there are some downsides too. In the example I showed, the phase-to-ground
voltages of the two unfaulted conductors rise to almost twice what they would be in a
balanced condition. Here’s why that matters: Higher voltage requires more insulation which
means more cost. Especially on large transmission lines where insulation means literally holding
the conductors great distances away from each other and the ground, those costs can add up
quick. It might seem like an esoteric problem for an electrical engineer, but in practice,
it just means that ungrounded power systems can be a lot more expensive (a problem anyone
can understand). But that’s just the start. Look back at our diagram and you can see
the faulted phase potential is equal to ground potential. In other words, their
difference is zero. There’s no voltage, and when you have zero voltage, you also have
zero current. No electricity is flowing from the conductor into the ground. Or at least not
very much is. You still have the capacitive coupling between the unfaulted conductors
that allows a little bit of current to flow, but it’s not much. And that matters
because nearly all the devices that would protect a system from a problem (like
a ground fault) need some current to flow. If you know much about wiring in buildings, you
might be familiar with the classic example of a toaster with a metal case. It could be any
appliance, but let’s use a toaster. Under normal conditions, current flows from the live
or hot wire through a heating element and into the neutral wire to return to the grid, completing
the circuit. But, if something comes loose inside the toaster, the live or energized side of
your electrical supply could come into contact with that metal case, making it energized too.
This could start a fire, or in the worst case, shock someone who touches the case. So, many
appliances are required to have another conductor attached to the housing, giving the current a
parallel, low-resistance return path. That low resistance means lots of current will flow,
triggering a breaker to shut off the circuit. And, it’s not just the breakers in your house that
work this way. Nearly all the protective devices, called relays, that monitor parts of the power
grid for problems rely on fault current to tell the difference between normal electrical
loads and short circuits. The simplest way to do that is make sure the fault current is much
higher than the normal loads. In the case of the damaged toaster, that fault current flowed
through a conductor that is called “ground” (but is actually just a parallel wire that connects
to the neutral in your electrical panel). But, in the case of substations and transmission lines,
the fault current path is the actual ground. Let’s look back at the diagram and convert it
to a grounded system. If I add a strong bond to ground at the generator, things don’t look
much different in the unfaulted condition. But as soon as you add a phase-to-ground short
circuit, the diagram looks much different. First, the other phases don’t experience a
shift in their phase-to-ground potential. But secondly, there’s now a path for fault
current to flow through the ground back to the source. And that’s the answer to
the question in the title of this video: electrical current (in nearly all cases) doesn’t
flow into the earth; it flows through the earth. The ground is really just another wire. Although
not a great one. Let me show you an example. I have a narrow acrylic box full of dry sand. I put a copper rod into the sand on either
side of the box and connected a circuit with a lightbulb so that the current has to flow
across the sand from one electrode to the other. When I turn on the switch, nothing happens.
It turns out that dry sand is a pretty good insulator. In fact, soil and rock vary widely
in how well they conduct electrical current. The resistivity changes with soil
type, seasons, weather, temperature, and moisture content. For example, let’s try to
wet this sand and see if it makes a difference. Still nothing. Even completely saturating the
sand with tap water, only a tiny current flows. You can barely see anything in the lightbulb, but
the current meter shows a tenth of an amp now. Soil resistivity also changes with
the chemical constituents in the soil, which is why I’m having trouble getting any
current to flow through the sand. There just aren’t enough electrolytes. Even with a layer of
standing water on top of the sand doesn’t conduct much current at all. If I add just a little
bit of salt water to that standing water, immediately you see that the resistivity
goes down and the lightbulb is able to light. And if I let that salt water soak into the soil,
now the sand is able to conduct electricity too. This resistivity of soil to conduct current
is pretty important. Earth isn’t a great wire, but what it lacks in conductivity, it
makes up for in size. You can kind of image current flowing from a ground electrode into the
surrounding soil as a series of concentric shells, each representing a drop in voltage between the
faulted conductor and the ground potential. Each shell has more surface area for current to flow
and so has lower resistance until eventually there’s practically no resistance at
all. But up close to the electrode, the shells are spaced tightly together toward
a single point or line. That spacing is related to the resistance of the soil, and it can
represent a pretty serious safety issue. Here’s a little demonstration I
set up to show how this works. This is a length of nichrome wire connected
between mains voltage with a few power resistors in between to limit the current. When I flip the
switch, electrical current flows through the wire, simulating a ground fault. This length of NiChrome
wire is resistive to the flow of current just like the soil would be in a ground fault condition.
You can see it heat up when I flip the switch. That means the electric potential along
this wire is different at every point. I can show that just by measuring the voltage
with a meter at a few different locations. Remember that voltage is the difference
in potential between two points, or in the case of Zap McBodySlam here,
between two feet. When Zap steps on the wire, his legs are are at two different
electric potentials, and unfortunately, human bodies are better conductors than the
ground. That difference in electric potential creates a voltage that drives current up into
one leg and down out of the other. In this case, I just have that voltage turning on a little
light, but depending on how high that voltage is, and how well Zap is insulated from it, this
step potential can be a matter of life or death. In fact, power line technicans are often
encouraged to hop on one foot away from a ground fault to reduce the chance of a step potential.
It sounds silly, but it might save their life. Similarly, power technicians often come
into contact with the metal cases around equipment regularly. So, if a ground
fault happens on a piece of equipment, and the resistance of the grounding system
is too high, there can be a voltage between the ground and the metal case, again creating the
possibility of a voltage across a person’s body, called touch potential. The engineers
who design power plants, substations, and transmission lines have to consider what
touch potentials and step potentials can be safely withstood by a person and design grounding systems
to make sure that they never exceed that level. For example, most substations are equipped not
just with a single grounding electrode but a grid of buried conductors to minimize resistance
in the earth connection. You might also notice that many substations use crushed rock as the
ground surface. That’s not just because linesmen don’t like to mow the grass. It’s because the
crushed rock, like the dry sand in my demo, doesn’t conduct electricity well and
minimizes the chance of standing water. But, not all power systems use the ground just
as a safety measure. There are systems where the earth is actually the primary return path
for current to flow. The ground is essentially the neutral line. Electrical distribution
systems called “Single Wire Earth Return” or SWER are used in a few places around the
world to deliver electrical power in rural areas. Using the earth as a return path can save
cost, since you only have to run a single wire, but of course there are safety
and technical challenges too. Similarly, there are some high voltage
transmission lines across the word that use direct current (like a battery) instead
of AC. We’ll save a detailed discussion of these systems for another day, because there is
a lot of fascinating engineering involved. But, I did want to mention them here, because many of
these lines are equipped with really elaborate grounding systems. Although most High Voltage DC
transmission lines use two conductors (positive and negative), some only use one with the return
current flowing through the earth or the sea. And, even the bipolar lines often include
grounding systems so they they can use ground return during and outage or emergency
if one pole is out of service. For example, the Pacific DC Intertie that carries power
from the pacific northwest into Los Angeles has elaborate grounding systems at both ends.
In Oregon, over 1000 electrodes are buried in a ring with a circumference of 2 miles or
3.2 kilometers. In California, the grounding system consists of huge electrodes submerged
in the Pacific Ocean a few miles off the shore. Unlike AC return currents that generally follow
a path that matches the transmission line, DC currents can flow through the entire earth. In
essence, the electrodes are completely decoupled. That does mean they’re susceptible to some
environmental issues though. They create magnetic fields that can affect compass
readings and magneto-sensitive fish like salmon and eels. In ocean electrodes,
the current can cause electrolysis, breaking down seawater into toxic chemicals
like chloroform and bromoform. And, stray electrical currents in the ground can flow
into pipelines and other buried structures, causing them to corrode. This is also a
problem with some electric trains that use the rail as a return path. You may have heard that
electricity takes the path of least resistance, but that’s not really true. Electricity takes
all the paths it can in accordance with their relative conductivity. So, even though a big steel
rail is a lot more conductive than the earth, return current from traction motors can and does
flow into ground, sometimes corroding adjacent pipelines, and occasionally interfering
with buried telecommunication lines too. I’ve conveniently left out lightning
from this discussion until now. Unlike a conventional circuit where
current is alway moving, lightning is a type of static electricity.
It’s not flowing… until it is. And unlike fault current that
only uses the ground as a conduit, the current from a lightning strike really does
just flow into the ground, or most frequently, out of the ground and into the atmosphere,
restoring an imbalance of charge created by the movement of air or water… or something
else. We really don’t understand lightning that well. But an additional and vital reason
we ground electrical systems is so that, if lightning strikes, that current has a
direct path to the ground. If it didn’t, it might arc across gaps or build up charge in
the system, creating a fire or damaging equipment. It’s not just lighting, ground faults, and circuit
return current that flows through the earth. Lots of other natural mechanisms cause current to
flow below our feet, including solar wind, changes in earth’s magnetic field, and more. These
are collectively known as a telluric currents, and they intermingle below the surface with
the currents that we send into the ground. A common question I get about the electrical
grid is how to know specifically which power plant serves a city or a building. It’s kind
of like asking what tree or plant created the oxygen that you breath. Technically, it’s more
likely to be one close to you than very far away, but that’s not quite how it works. Power
gets intermingled on the grid - that’s why it’s called the grid in the first place - and
it just flows along the lines in accordance with the difference in potential. And the ground
works in a similar way. You can’t necessarily draw lines of current flow between sources and
loads, lightning strikes, and telluric phenomena. The truth of how current flows in the ground
is a little more complicated than that; it all kind of mixes together down there to some
extent. But above the surface, it really isn’t so complicated. Current doesn’t flow to the ground;
it flows through the ground and back up. If there is electricity moving into the ground from an
energized conductor, go back to the source of that conductor and see what’s happening. For the
grid, it’s probably a transformer or electrical generator, in either case, a simple coil of
wire. And, the electrical current flowing out of the coil has to be equal to the electrical
current flowing into it, whether that current is coming from one of the other phases, a neutral
line, or an electrode buried in the ground. I hope you’ve noticed some improvements in
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