Why doesn’t electricity from a power plant flow directly into the ground?
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at
5:32 am
bob asked:
I’m trying to learn how the power grid works and I’m confused by one thing. When you plug an appliance into your home electrical outlet, power flows through it and into the ground. My question is, if power plants are connected to the ground, why does electricity go all the way to your house, when there’s a ground right there? Doesn’t it follow the path of least resistance? Thanks
Aren’t power lines grounded at each pole?
Tagged with: Electrical Outlet • Electricity • Power Grid
Filed under: Engineering
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It’s insulated from the ground. That’s why there are hot and neutral wires all the way to the point of use.
No, they are not grounded at each pole.
It helps if you can picture the situation like this: The plant uses generators that establish a voltage difference between two wires. One wire is at V+ and the other one is at V-. These wires go all the way to your house, and when you plug an appliance into an outlet, you effectively place a resistance between the two wires. Since there is a voltage difference between the two prongs of your appliance, current flows through the appliance and power is delivered. For additional safety, electrical installations also provide a connection to ground in case your appliance malfunctions and creates a short circuit–so instead of shorting out the two wires (connecting the wires so that V+ equals V-) that carry electricity from the plant to your house, the current can instead be absorbed into the ground and both wires can stay at V+ and V-, respectively. To answer your question, the ground connection is only at your house; the plant is only connected to the thin, vertical slots in your outlets.
ground is the return path current. It has zero potential thus all electron flow to it if there’s a path. In power plants all lines in high potential are insulated such that it flaws to your house as an electric energy and converted to another form of energy(heat) if your appliance is oven. If at the power plant high potential wire are accidentally attach to the ground, Brown out may occur on your home because there is the
shortest path of current to ground occur before your house .Insulating materials such as porcelain, plastic etc are used to avoid contacts of high potential wire to the ground.