Comments by "Bill Elkins" (@billelkins994) on "The Engineering Mindset" channel.

In urban areas customers will be close enough together to share a transformer and will likely receive two phases of a three phase distribution and have 120/208 service. As customer density decreases sharing of transformers will decrease. Last I checked I think I share a transformer with four other customers. We live hundreds of feet apart. If you live hundreds of yards apart you probably have your own transformer. Foot is equal to the metric foot defined in ISO 2848 Yard is equal to near'bout a metre but not quite.,
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You do not pay for electricity. You pay for power.
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@timderks5960 Actually circuit breakers and fuses are not very good at preventing fires. Most electrically started fires are the result of poor connections that overheat without over current. I suspect that is why the arc fault detection devices now exist. A good thing to do is feel the wall at each electical outlet, whether in use or not, looking for warnth. If you find heat you have a problem.
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Circuit breakers and fuses were never intended to protect people. Their sole job is to protect downstream circuitry. Protecting people is a very recent concept.
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Hi. Neutral is the name given to a point in a circuit. Typically it is grounded but maybe not. It is the point in the circuit that you reference for voltage measurements. The common lead of a meter will be placed on neutral and other points in the circuit measured relative to neutral. If a very simple circuit is built consisting of a 120v incandescent lamp and we name one of the wire attached to the lamp neutral and the other wire hot. We then attach a 120v battery to the lamp with the positive terminal on the hot wire and negative to neutral. Measuring the hot wire we would say that the lamp is running on +120v. If we turn the battery over and connect the minus terminal to the hot wire and the positive terminal to neutral. Our measurement would then say the lamp is running on -120v. In both of the previous measurement the common lead of the meter will be placed on the neutral because that what we intended when we named it neutral. If we devise a way to turn the battery over 120 times a second we will have invented 120vac @ 60 Hz. but the names of the circuit do not change. We still place the common lead of the meter on the neutral point. We will have to switch to an AC meter.
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@tedlahm5740 ALL transformers have output lines that are 180 degrees out of phase. It is what transformers do. When one output is going positive the other line is going negative. The US takes advantage of this by putting a center-tap on the secondary and naming it neutral.
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I think used electricity was an unfortunate choice of words. You use power not electricity. Used power leaves the system as heat. Electricity is like a bicycle chain. It transmits power but is basically the same links going round and round. You bought your electricity when you paid for your wire.
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@bradowen8862 When a point in a circuit is called neutral it is being identified as the point from which all voltage measurements are made. Therefore when you measure the neutral voltage versus the neutral voltage the answer is always zero.
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You do not need the neutral wire. You should have a safety ground but that takes no part in the power circuit. DO NOT USE THIS INFO TO ATTACH NON-NORTH AMERICAN EQUIPMENT TO NA POWER. The rest of the world is too hung up on neutrals.
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When Mr. Celsius set up his temperature scale he made water boil a 0 degrees and freeze at 100 degrees. He would be appalled by this "water freezes at 0" thing.
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In North America the voltage on the wire called neutral is zero volts. This is made so by grounding the neutral at one point, and only one point. This is done in the main panel. It isn't done in sub-panels. If the neutral is not grounded it can have any amount of AC or DC voltage on it. While a meter will read 120v across the circuit the entire circuit could be floating a thousand volts above ground due to a nearby lighting strike last week. Grounding the neutral is good as long as you do it in only one place.
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@TippyPuddles Hi Ann. If a circuit is not attached to ground there is no way to say what its voltage is. In the winter time when humidity can be low the carpet you walk across may cause you and a doorknob to be a different voltage by thousands of volts. In a supermarket the shopping cart you push around may be dragging a small chain on the floor. Electricity is everywhere and it is out to get you. The lightning strike affectting circuits for a period of time doesn't happen because the circuit is grounded somewhere. Lightning strikes generate very high currents and can damage wire in a home. Are your homes flickering together? If so it is probably the power company. Regardless it does need to be looked at by someone. Flickering and dim lights means heat is happening somewhere it should not be.
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The neutral provides a return path to the power source. The ground wire is to attach to you. When using an old school metal cased drill the ground lead would be connected to the case and you when you picked it up. No matter what disaster happens to the circuitry inside of the metal case it and you are safely at ground potential. If the neutral were attached to the case and the power cord neutral opened you would be the return path to the power source. Both neutral and ground may attach to the same place, but they do so for different reasons and must remain separate.
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Hot line is the line that can kill. Neutral will not kill you. Doesn't matter AC or DC.
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The electrons do not go anywhere! That is like asking where the links on your bicycle chain go. "Used" was not good choice of words. If you are only customer on a transformer you bought your electrons when you wired your house. You still have the same electrons now. If you share a transformer your electrons may visit your neighbors but some of theirs will visit you. Admittedly some electrons may have wandered off but most of them have been around the house for years.
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No, it is not the panel that generates the 120v. It is the transformer on the pole.
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Don't store them near your bucket of positrons.
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@Rob_Dingemans How many 3 phase devices do you own?
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@EngineeringMindset The rest of the world bought twice as many incandescent light bulbs as we 120 volters.
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@vegasjw My 240v outlet measures 240v.
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Because it is a neutral just like any other neutral in any electrical system anywhere in the world.
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@bradowen8862 Why does it have to be more complicated?
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@bradowen8862 I see.
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That is what transformers do. A three phase delta secondary has no neutral, but if you choose a center tap on one of secondary coils to be neutral the end result will be two 120v 180 degrees out of phase and a 208v phase at 90 degrees to the other two.
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@varpower People who say that tend to have tiny little metric minds.
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No it isn't.
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Power factor is a percentage 1=100%. 2=200%. If you can design a circuit with a power factor of 2, it would mean that for every watt you put in you get 2 watts of power. You could be a rich man.
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If you want 120 volters to change you will have to provide a reason. What does the average German electrical user have in his home that a 120 volter doesn't have? When incandescent lamps were the rage 230 volters had to replace lamps twice as often as 120 volters. 230 volt filaments are thinner than 120v filaments for the same wattage. Twelve volt incandescent lamps in an automobile often outlast the car.
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@ninjapancakes9435 Wiring ground to neutral inside the home is allowed only at one point, the main panel. That one point is to make neutral have some reference to the world we live in. If the neutral is not grounded the circuit could appear to be working normally but be floating 500 volts above ground due to a defect in insulation between primary and secondary in the transformer or a dead snake that shorted the primary and secondary. The world is not perfect it is really good to know your neutral is at least in the vicinity of ground potential.
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The primary winding will be at several thousand volt levels. The primary connection can be a hot and a neutral or two phases. It depends whether the transformer is being fed off a wye distribution or a delta distribution. Delta feeds don't have a neutral so it's two hots or nothing.
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If appliances were added in series your statement would be correct. Appliances are added in parallel so current will increase.
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Neutral is the name of the point from which measurements are made. So neutral is just a name. The really important thing is you can not have more than one neutral per circuit.
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@EngineeringMindset Minor point. The electrons still flow the same way in conventional current. Conventinal current is "hole flow" and makes the arrow shaped symbols in solid state devices make sense.
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