What Happens When You Connect Earth and Neutral Wires in a Power Supply?

[NoTime]

For domestic wiring (i.e. not 3 phase) the wire colours are: Brown Live, Blue Neutral, Green/Yellow stripe Earth/Gnd.

Thanks for clearing that up.

*(The 3 phase wiring colours have indeed changed in the UK recently, in an effort to maximise danger...).

But as I pointed out before, I've seen it done wrong far to often to actually trust the colors to be right.

 

[Pumblechook]

In Britain and most countries neutral is the centre point of a 3 phase transformer.,. 120 deg phase between the 3 'lives' which are fed to alternate houses. We had the situation a year ago where we had power but some of the neighbours hadn't. One of the phases was missing.

In the USA and some other countries it is usually to have 2 lives, 180 deg between them entering the house.. Small apliances being connected between one live and neutral 110 V... Large items are connected across the 2 lives = 220 Volts.

The Earth will be connected to the neutral at some point, at the transfomer OR where the supply enters the house and even points in between. Shorting Earth to neutral may cause an RCD (Earth Leakage) breaker to trip out because it no longer senses the same current flowing in the live and neutral.. Some will travel through the Earth wire and by-pass the RCD.

 

[darkwood]

Just thought id mention that some appliances require earthing for more than one purpose as an example some electronic devices like computers,require an Earth mainly for safety to protect from electric shock and also to dump 'noise' generated by the electronics if you don't properly Earth the computer it may have a harmful potential on any metal surfaces as well as creating interferance and operational issues.

 

[darkwood]

the phases on the step down transformer are all used and not wasted as you seem to think in domestic supplies 1 phase might do 1 street the others might do another street etc with balanced loading in mind each house on a street might be alternately connected to a phase as you the supply cable is run eg; house (a) phase 1, house (b) phase 2, house (c) phase 3 then back to phase 1 for house (d) etc etc with the center tap of the transformer the common neutral for all the houses.