Electrical Panel Neutral And Grounding

Two live hot wires and one neutral.

Electrical panel neutral and grounding.

Please see nec article 250 28 for when to make a neutral to ground connection. Installing a ground wire to your electrical service panel can be done easily with a few hand tools. Neutral is usually connected to ground earth at the main electrical panel street drop or meter and also at the final step down transformer of the supply. A second panel or sub panel should have the neutral and ground terminals or bars isolated from each other this is why the main circuit feed to the sub panel must have 4 wires with a dedicated insulated wire for the neutral and a separate wire for the ground.

Neutral is a circuit conductor that normally completes the circuit back to the source. The electrical path main panel. By shunting excess line voltage back to the panel s neutral pole the ground current forces the circuit breaker to trip. Sub panels are grounded through the cable that provides the sub feed circuit power.

The main bonding jumper provides a ground connection between the neutral ground bus and the service panel. For multiple panels the situation is more complex. Grounding a sub panel. There are several different ways main panels are configured in homes here it is in a nutshell.

The tripped breaker shuts off the circuit s current preventing a potentially dangerous situation. The code defi nes bonded or bonding as connected connecting to establish electrical continuity and. That is for simple single panel installations. If your electrical panel is the first service disconnect point and the utility has only provided normally current carrying conductors phase and neutral wires plus a ground wire then no you do not make a neutral to ground connection.

Three wires come from the electric meter and go into the main panel. Main panels and sub panels. The code defi nes grounding as the connecting to ground or to a conductive body that extends the ground connection and the code defi nes ground as the earth. Another ground connection is made by the grounding electrode conductor or gec.

Basically grounding is connecting to the earth. The ground bar is bonded internally when an external bond to earth is installed as described at the link for electrical grounding below. This is a brief walk through of a simple grounding and bonding system and what happens with the flow of current in normal operation and in a ground fault c.