Talk:Ground (electricity)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

One or two wires first?

I thought they used two wires for the telegraph first, then realized the ground could be used as a return path, and THEN started using only one wire, since it saved wire. - Omegatron 13:15, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Green grounds

i just read that ground is color coded green because it was originally made of bare copper wires, which turn green over time. good point to add? - Omegatron 17:50, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

The English words "ground" and "green" both begin with he same two letters, making their relationship easy to remember.173.61.94.121 (talk) 03:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)Frank Snotra

1820 or 1830s which is it?

neither the edit nor the reversion quoted sources

the edit mentioned that kirchoffs cuircuit laws appeared in 1845 which is after both dates?!

the reversion just said "i think i have good reason to state 1820 but did not say what that good reason was" Plugwash 16:57, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Heron justified his 1820 date for electromagnetic telegraphy. Theory was well behind practice. Ancheta Wis 17:14, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC).

Thank you for accepting my date, Ancheta Wis. For your benefit, Plugwash, let me explain that my "reason" was this article on the Electromagnetic Telegraph, which I commend to you. It would be nice to find a corroborating source of information, so I shall keep looking. --Heron 20:20, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why....

Can somebody explain (in simpler words) why, if there is a fault in the circuit and someone touches it, the current runs to the ground and not to the person.... I've been looking all over the net and found nothing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.94.138.233 (talk • contribs) 21:09, 22 December 2004

It is a little tricky to explain

the first thing to realise is earthing is not a cure all for problems with electrical installations just an important part.

The other important thing to realise is that if you have a high resistance (the human body is fairly high resistnace :hundreds of ohms to about a megohm depending on factors like clothing type and skin wetness) and a low resistnace in paralell the bulk of current will flow through the low resistance.

a popular misconception is that current naturally wants to flow "to ground". What it really "wants" to do is complete the cuircuit between the terminals of the supply transformer.

At the supply transformer the neutral is connected to real earth.

The earthing system of the house is also connected to the neutral of the supply transfomer (either directly or through the body of the earth.

Protective devices (overcurrent protection is usuable for this with direct connection with indirect connection a rcd must be used) detect the current flow caused by the fault from a phase core to the earthing system and disconnect the power.

furthermore to reduce shock risk further all metal that leaves the house into the ground is bonded together to keep the voltage between parts of it as low as possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Plugwash (talk • contribs) 21:59, 22 December 2004

No doubts the electrons want to flow from phase-clamp (sin wave of 220v amplitude) of the generator to the zero-clamp. According to you, the current flows through somebody touched the phase just because (s)he stands at the ground, which is connected to the 0-clamp of the generator/transformer. You would not be in danger if the ground were a stub. The question is why do the electricity producers jeopartize us connecting the 0-wire to the ground? Why should we live on the conductor directly connected to the power source? --Javalenok 14:59, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Earth-neutral bonding is not negligence on the part of the electricity company. In fact, it is required by law for safety reasons. An explanation (sort of) can be found in our earthing system article. To summarise, the first insulation fault in an isolated (IT) system does not normally cause a dangerous condition, as you correctly said. However, once such a fault has occurred, the system stops being isolated and becomes unprotected, making it more dangerous than a proper TN system. One of the problems is that you don't know which wire has been grounded, so either wire could be hot, making the system unpredictable. --Heron 17:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Benjamin Franklin was not killed during his 1752 kite experiment because he was insulated; he was not part of the conducting path. The current did not flow through him. One year later, George Richmann's lightning experiment took special care to ground himself; Richmann died instantly from his misapplication of grounding. Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod worked because it was not always part of an electrical circuit. It conducted to ground only when it was subject to a high-enough strike. The principle of insulation is the reason that electricians do not work from metal ladders; they use non-conducting ladders to insulate themselves from hazard.

I went to school with a girl who was unfortunate enough to be near a lightning strike. When someone asked her "What was it like?" she said: "I don't want to talk about it"; in other words, it was unspeakable.

We ground ourselves when working with electrostatic-sensitive devices, like memories (RAM), when the electrostatic charge that accumulates on us can zap the devices.

In some cities, inadequate inspection can fail to detect improperly grounded electrical power sources, which can be tied to more-or-less random locations; it is the responsibility of the installing electricians to adhere to the wiring code and to use proper ground locations. To do otherwise is to create an electrical hazard wherein unwary passers-by can accidentally touch a hot location, complete the circuit, and be electrocuted. Their unfortunate cases then become articles in the newspapers for us to tsk-tsk over. But there is actually a responsibility for the city and standards authorities to review the cases and investigate the causes of these silent, unmarked public hazards. If someone is electrocuted near you, stand aside. Otherwise you will join him. Let someone who knows what he/she is doing take over. Remember it only takes 100 microamperes to pass through your heart to kill you.

I remember one article where the passer-by once walked on a hot manhole plate on the sidewalk, killing her. Her father has since embarked on a campaign to mitigate these situations.

If you, the reader, still do not understand, please ask somewhere. Novices can start with electricity; then continue to Electrical connection. See also Isolation transformer and Electrical insulation, IEEE —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ancheta Wis (talk • contribs) 00:55, 2 October 2005

The last edit to this talk page (which merely added a Wikiproject) has caused me to revisit it; by coincidence, a current article for the Sunday Chicago Tribune (July 31, 2011), page one, recounts the electrocution of two girls who were detasseling corn in a cornfield this week, where one would not expect an electrical hazard. On the face of it, an improperly energized irrigator was the proximate cause; one girl stepped into a puddle and was electrocuted; the second attempted to help her, and was also electrocuted. Fortunately the other two girls in the party stayed clear of the hazard. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:09, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

"Uses" cleanup

Regarding the beginning of the first paragraph of the Uses subsection (summarizing power ground): Does this need to be edited? It looks like it got copied and pasted in from somewhere. I don't know nearly enough about the subject to trust myself to fix it without spewing inacurracies, though. Maybe someone who knows something about it can fix it? Michael Kelly 03:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That first paragraph has existed for several years, since at least this date October 2004; the conversational tone was not there as of '16:38, 20 August 2005 by Oliviosu', for example. Since the sentences have evolved over several years, the internal evidence is against a copy-paste. You are welcome to copyedit the conversational tone if that disturbs you. (Just don't ground yourself. Otherwise you could get electrocuted in the presence of dangerous current. That's why birds can sit on an electrical distribution wire; that's why Franklin survived his kite experiment. :=) --Ancheta Wis 18:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I personally would be comfortable with this edit to the first paragraph, from two years ago --19:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

"NEC" refers to National Electrical Code (US) --19:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

As a diff will show, "NEC (Article 250 ) You need to establish an effective ground-fault current path and the earth shall not be considered as an effective ground-fault current path. " was elided. I happen to think that useful advice. But it is now gone, as is the tag. Ancheta Wis

Region?

There should be more info. about which regions prefer "earthing", "earthing system", as compared to "ground", "grounding", "grounded", "grounding system"?

This does seem extremely dependent on dialect, region, neighborhood.

earth_ground;

ground_(electricity);

ground_(electrical);

ground_(power);

ground_and_neutral.

Then there is "earthling".

hopiakuta 22:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Grounding/Earthing Grid

My English isn't good enough to write about what a grounding/earthing grid is but I suggest that an English speaking electrical engineer with experience in power substations write a section about it in this article.Renato Costa 14:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

in grounding and giid the wires which are connected to be in deep then it can bee safe--117.211.40.107 (talk) 13:07, 31 July 2014 (UTC)Italic text

Merge from ground conductor

A few of the nuggets from Ground conductor need to be moved here. And then that article needs to disappear. That article is not strong enough to stand on its own. If you have an objection, I would like to hear it. --Codeczero 01:50, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

So what is wrong with an article about a type of conductor? Might there be an article about a voltage source? There is a lot of difference between a wire to ground and ground itself (the content of this article). If there is an article about the wire to ground, so much the better. You have to start somewhere on any article. The ground conductor on an electrical pylon is not the same as the concept and practice of grounding. --Ancheta Wis 02:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Keep / main template, see also : grounding elements of more general "ground (electricity)" concepts are different. There is plenty of information that an be added to this page. Put links between them though ... J. D. Redding 22:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Merge- the ground conductor article is weak and repetitive, and includes things better left either in this article or discussion of electrical transmission lines. --Wtshymanski 17:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Suggest remove section on Shielding

Shielding is a very rich and different subject from grounding. I suggest we remove the shielding section and start a new article with it, or just remove it. John 05:10, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

There is already an article on shielding, which is much more extensive than the small section about Faraday cages. It talks about ground, so it is appropriate to this article. --Ancheta Wis 06:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Expert attention needed

I feel this article contains serious inaccuracies. One example is "In a mains electricity (AC power) wiring installation, the ground is a wire with an electrical connection to earth, that provides an alternative path to the ground for heavy currents that might otherwise flow through a victim of electric shock." The actual mechanism of protection is that if a damaged conductor contacts metal that a person might touch, such as the metal case of an appliance, a large current will flow in the grounding conductor, and a corresponding current will flow in the hot wire, causing the circuit breaker to trip.

Another example is the description of grounding for radio stations. These ground systems improve efficiency not by establishing a good connection to ground, but by reflecting radio waves that would otherwise enter the lossy earth and be dissipated as heat. --Gerry Ashton 16:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your statements. Please add or reposition the disputable tags which you note are needed in the article. --Ancheta Wis 03:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I also feel that Wikipedia has an assortment of articles related to grounding {this article, Ground conductor, Earthing system, and perhaps others I missed) that seem to have been written independently with no apparent effort to avoid overlap or to be sure the subject was well-covered. --Gerry Ashton 03:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Gerry, I agree with your comment about AC ground, your wording sounds pretty good, maybe you just reword it. I am working on a figure to illustrate how that works, but its not soup yet. Also, I corrected some of the inaccuracies about ground planes. Do you still see problems? John 23:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ground symbol

I don't know if that has changed, it's unlikely, but I have an electronics book which says that the symbol for earth ground is the one in the middle on that picture in the article, not the last one and that the chassis grounding is therefore represented by the first one and the last one.

Introductory Electronics for Scientists and Engineers, 2nd edition by Simpson ISBN: 0205083773 p.3. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.63.112.33 (talk) 22:50, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd love to see some history of the ground symbol (as well as other symbols). Image:PhotoelectricEffect(Tesla).png seems relevant. — Omegatron 01:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Lightning rods

This section of the article is nonsense. The science behind lightning strips is debatable at best, but this section doesn't even describe one of the views correctly. Lightning strips *do not* ground the lightning - how can a current powerful enough to zap through miles of air possibly be carried by a thin metal strip? In fact, the effect is not fully understood, but it is thought to involve earthing the air near a lightning rod so as to reduce the charge difference between regions of air - thus reducing the probability of a strike. Due to the random nature of lightning, it is only very recently that decent data as to strikes has started to be built up, and so very little is known about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.134.179.30 (talk) 18:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

This article is weak, in that it only provides a wikilink to the Lightning rod article (which contans many reliable references) rather than citing the reliable sources directly in the article. However, the comment from 212.134.179.30 does not cite any references, so there is no reason to consider anything in that comment to be true. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:03, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I have just revised this section now called Lightning Protection Systems. The "Lightning Rod" page it is linked to, could easily be removed (I may do just that) as that page is a cluster [lightning protection systems has been redirected into Lightning Rods, as though LR are a system, they are nothing more than a metal (cog) rod in and overall (machine) system. Although it is no longer explicitly biased from my previous efforts, it still remains of overall poor quality. I have now put LRs, LPS, etc., into perspective with regards to Grounding (grids), given LPS are not "special' grounding systems... they are systems in their own right that require connection to grounding grids in order to function on the most basic of levels. Hope you approve. :) Borealdreams (talk) 15:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

What colour in other countries?

It's green/yellow in Australian wiring. Is that universal or what? —Pengo 11:57, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

UK Usage confusion

I've commented out this:

"However the term 'grounded' is a legitimate UK electrical engineering term, but actually means almost the exact opposite. In UK English use, something that is 'grounded' should be earthed but is no longer, creating a hazard condition."

because I don't understand it. If the conductor that connects the case of some electrical apparatus to earth ground falls off, surely that case is now "ungrounded" ? Or to be consistent, one might say "unearthed". I've never read the above paradoxical usae in any UK materials. Anyone in the UK electrical trades, please tell me what the usage is. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Cross-bonding to earth in the bathroom

I have a question about this portion of the article:

...and pipes and cables entering the bathroom are sometimes cross-bonded. This is done to try to reduce the potential difference between objects that can be touched simultaneously.

If a branch circuit terminating in a bathroom, kitchen or laundry room is bonded to a nearby metal water pipe, how will its circuit breaker back at the main breaker panel ever see enough current to trip when there's a fault? If this practice is only performed when employing GFCI wallplates, then make this requirement clear in the text. Binksternet (talk) 18:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the passage is trying to say that the electrical safety ground (in the USA, the equipment grounding conductor, conduit, armored cable sheath, etc.) is bonded to the water pipes. If it means what is called, in the USA, the grounded conductor, then it's wrong. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Cable sheaths are not circuit conductors; this segment refers to bonding, not circuit neutral. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Bond

In one section it states that the term is also used for bond conductors and terminals/screws. This is actually the wrong term in Canada as far as I know. I was taught that there is only one 'ground' conductor and the rest are conductors 'bonded' to it. Should we change the wording if it is the wrong use in all/most english speaking countries?--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Bonding and grounding are not synonyms and have two different specific meanings. I have changed the "Synonyms" paragraph to "Bonding" and added a reference to an IEEE manual that discusses the difference 142.177.128.226 (talk) 18:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Ground Currents, Step Potential, Earth Current Transients

Hello all, I was looking for "Ground Currents" on wikipedia and note it has been redirected to here. Although it is often related to Ground Grids & Grounding, it is not exclusive to them, and it is barely even mentioned in this article. I know there is another term (common to faults within high voltage substations) and an excellent example of "Step Potential" and why everything within a substation is "excessively" bonded to each other... so no potential can occur. I would like to suggest the "ground currents" redirect is removed, as one is a phenomena, the other a physical device. Someone with experience in substations would be best tasked to address that area, subsection or new page may be required, but my understanding of this is fuzzy at best. I have described "ground currents" & "step potential" in the lightning strike page, for those unfamiliar with it. Lets just say, reports of "tens of cows killed in a field because they sought shelter under a tree, dying from a lightning strike" is technically not correct. The "bolt of lightning" did not kill them, it was the associated ground currents of lightning discharge passing through their bodies (up one leg & down the other, hence the term step potential) that killed most if not all of them, unless the flash terminated on a particularly unlucky cow. Thanks for your input! Borealdreams (talk) 15:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

This is a little like saying "The bullet didn't kill him, it was because his heart stopped beating after it got a hole in it." I don't think hair splitting improves the explication here. It wasn't the ground current that killed the cows, either...it was that share of the gorund current that passed through their bodies. Actually, not even that - it was the physiological effects....etc. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:31, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Types of Grounding Systems

We could use more information on types of grounding system (high-resistance grounding vs. solid grounding vs. low-resistance grounding). I've added a bit of info that I've come across while researching, but if anyone has more info or more experience with these, please feel free to add...Tara Zieminek (talk) 16:58, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Health claims

I'm surprised (and disappointed, since I needed some debunking material on this) that this article doesn't cover the various, dubious health claims made for "earthing therapy" (and the seemingly pseudo-scientific market developing around this idea, similar to that for "magnet therapy"). AReaderOutThataway (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with the above. I came across this when looking at shoes, coming across https://www.earthrunners.com/pages/kickstarter which talks about "grounded/grounding/earthed/earthing shoes" and the health benefits of it. It delegates its research claims over to http://www.earthinginstitute.net and http://www.earthinginstitute.net/research/ - it seems their audience believes it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVDuuhX30VI - from what I can see so far, the language they use is very unscientific and very woo. I searched quora for something on this, as well as wikipedia, but couldn't find anything. Balupton (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

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Safety grounding

@Jc3s5h and Kringga: The sentence

The grounding ensures that exposed parts can never have a dangerous voltage with respect to ground, which could cause an electric shock if a grounded person touched them.

through several edits has been changed to this;

This ensures that exposed parts can never have a dangerous voltage with respect to ground for more than the amount of time required for the fuse or circuit breaker to open the circuit; otherwise a grounded person who touched touched the parts could receive an electric shock.

That is unnecessarily complicating the issue and not strictly accurate. The circuit breaker is more about protecting the wiring rather than protecting the person. Kringga points to voltage gradients in their edit summary, but impedance to earth from the protective conductor in most jurisdictions is required to be substantially less than one ohm. A fault to equipment exposed metal parts would generate a huge current to ground before the voltage at the touched part rose to a dangerous level. Such a current would overheat the wiring and burn your house down. That's what the circuit breaker is primarily protecting against, not electric shock. It is the grounding of exposed metal parts that protects against shock. SpinningSpark 09:28, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Electrical_safety_standards#Physiological_effects_of_electricity

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot, but there is a graph of the intent of the deleted prose. Instead we might put a link to the graph on the right in this article. The graph does show the effect of any current through the body (x-axis) versus elapsed time (y-axis) of the shock to the body. The article is Electrical_safety_standards#Physiological effects of electricity. The web does have public service articles for example The Fatal Current --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 16:26, 2 October 2020 (UTC) Following up, AC-3 (the yellow region in the graph) denotes where 'we can't let go of the electrified object' and shows that the protective device has to open the circuit in time, before we slip into the red region AC-4 (irreversible effects on our body). --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 19:06, 2 October 2020 (UTC) On a single x-axis value, say at 100 mA, the protective device has to open the circuit faster than 50 msec to stay within the green region AC-2, and our hand can still let go from a current of 100 mA. But if the protective device is slower than 75 msec, our hand involuntarily contracts (we are in the yellow region), and if the device does not open within 500 msec (1/2 second), our body starts suffering Red effects AC-4.1: 5% probability of fibrillation (100 mA for .5 sec), Red AC-4.2: 50% probability of fibrillation (100 mA for .800 sec), Red AC-4.3: over 50% probability of fibrillation (100 mA for 1.5 sec) or worse. The Blue region of current (.1 mA to .5 mA) is barely perceptible through our hand (but NOT through our heart! It's a lethal level.). --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 22:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should use the word never. The commonplace situation which an equipment grounding conductor protects against is a live conductor comes loose and touches the metal equipment case, or some other insulation failure allows a live conductor to touch the equipment case. Because the equipment case is grounded, a fairly large current flows (well above the 20 or so amperes allowed by the protection device on a typical branch circuit. So the circuit is opened in a fraction of a second, and both the wiring and people are protected.

But there are other situations which I'm not sure the equipment grounding protector would protect against. For example, an electric distribution wire at the top of a power pole falls on the wires that lead from a power pole to a home. Jc3s5h (talk)

I think the original sentence is a more accurate statement of the purpose of utility grounding: "The grounding ensures that exposed parts can never have a dangerous voltage with respect to ground, which could cause an electric shock if a grounded person touched them." This is supported by sources: ([1], p.9), [2], ([3], p.49). Grounding has other purposes [4] but safety is the primary one. This needs to be stated up front at the top of the introduction so nontechnical readers won't have any misunderstanding. If Jc3s5h is worried about the words "can never", they could be replaced by "do not", but the safety statement should be in there. We can explain the details of how 3rd wire grounds make equipment safer below that. --Chetvorno^TALK 00:26, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis: A good graph. But regardless of how fast the circuit breaker acts, an exposed metal part attached to a 3rd wire safety ground is going to have a lower voltage on it for a shorter time and be safer for human contact than an ungrounded part. --Chetvorno^TALK 02:47, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

@SpinningSpark: I find your statement about grounding to be inaccurate. Yes, the breakers exist to protect wiring. However, the only way to make a fault safe is to open the circuit. Earthing will not eliminate voltages and honestly will make the situation worse because of voltage gradients, the purpose of earthing is to eliminate static charges. Breakers are designed to trip when there is a rush of current caused by a bolted fault. There are no other devices on a standard circuit that automatically clear faults, thus the circuit breaker is the only thing that actuates the grounding system. Again, breakers aren't just for protecting wiring. If you have 90 minutes free I HIGHLY suggest you watch this excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpgAVE4UwFw. Kringga (talk) 23:52, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the heading to your reply – that is not necessary or helpful when replying to an existing thread. No No, I'm not going to watch an hour and a half video which will probably only tell me things I already know. It starts with basic theory for crying out loud, which I think you can assume everyone in this discussion is already familiar with. Also, it's not very impressive that on the very first frame the video misspells theory. Does the video actually anywhere say that earth voltage gradients can be a shock hazard? I might watch that bit if you give me the time into the video.

In any case, this article is not about circuit breakers or electrical safety in general. Launching off into that area in detail is going way off topic for this article. Chetvorno above provided some good quality book sources stating the purpose of equipment safety grounding. A self-published Youtube video is not a good counter to that in Wikipedia terms. On Wikipedia we go with reliable sources. SpinningSpark 09:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

The video does discuss the dangers of voltage gradients. Mike Holt is a well-known educator in the electrical field and produces a range of virtual and in-person training which electricians and electrical engineers use to satisfy the continuing education requirements of the various state licensing boards in the United States. His site also hosts internet forums about electricity which provide much more intelligent discussion than other internet forums I've seen. I haven't taken any of his classes myself, but I considered them when I needed to renew my electrical engineering license. I found the video useful in understanding a series of changes that have been made in the National Electrical Code in the past 20 years or so. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

@SpinningSpark: If we remove the section in the article about the role breakers play in grounding then we have to remove the entire section that discusses safety grounding. Opening a circuit is indispensable to making a fault safe. If we don't mention that as part of the equipment grounding system, readers will be confused and could adopt the misconception that somehow current flows to the earth and that's how grounding makes a fault safe, and that's a problem. People have been killed by that myth. Kringga (talk) 17:15, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: You are right that an equipment grounding conductor would not protect against a power cross with a distribution line. That is one of the reasons for a ground rod and GEC to exist. Besides static dissipation, the GES also allows higher voltages from line crosses to go outside the building, through the ground, up the grounding electrode conductor on the pole, and back to the source through the neutral, hopefully triggering a recloser at the same time. Kringga (talk) 00:21, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kringga: I agree with your point; the breaker is a necessary part of safety grounding. And the misconception that the EGC's connection to the earthing electrode is what protects against ground faults. But this thread was originally about the lead paragraph. I don't think we need to explain the role of the circuit breaker there. This article will be read by people who know absolutely nothing about electricity; we need to ease into the tech stuff. The lead paragraph should just say the major purpose of grounding wires (EGCs) is to prevent dangerous voltages on exposed metal parts in the event of electrical (ground) faults. We can explain how EGCs do that by tripping the breaker in the 2nd paragraph. --Chetvorno^TALK 01:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

@Chetvorno: Fair enough, I can get behind what you're saying. If we don't mention over-current devices we should at least re-write the section in dispute so that it doesn't imply that current goes to ground or that grounding somehow brings surfaces to earth potential. Kringga (talk) 14:17, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Grounding rods and connectors

@Jc3s5h: I'm not sure I understand the substance of your revert [5]. Earthing system and Ground (electricity) are indeed related articles, but neither is "main" of the other. Somebody has placed the material about grounding rods and connectors, i.e. mechanical and wiring aspects about how grounding is done, both of which in my opinion belonging to the general topic of Ground (electricity), and not to Earthing system. So I moved the material here, following the practice outlined in WP:CWW. No such user (talk) 14:48, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

In this "Ground (electricity)" article there is a section, "Earthing systems". The first line of that section reads

Main article: Earthing system

Since ground rods and connectors are most often used as parts of the system that grounds a power system, and that is what the "Earthing system" article is about, "Earthing system" seems like a reasonable article to contain the description of ground rods and connectors. This article, "Ground (electricity)", is more general, and includes topics such as a reference voltage that isn't physically connected to the earth, as in satellites.

A further consideration is that the moved material references performance standards that apply to equipment used in electric power systems. These standards would not necessarily apply to grounds in a more general sense, where the grounding may be performed to achieve good performance of a radio antenna, or may be of a temporary nature such as a temporary military installation. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Since ground rods and connectors are most often used as parts of the system that grounds a power system, and that is what the "Earthing system" article is about, I don't think it's about that – it describes standard types of earthing circuitry of the power system. Rods and connectors are part of the general topic of earthing, be it for a power system, building installations, antennas or as lighting protection. Earthing system is the {{main}} article for, well, earthing systems, but not for rods. Possibly it needs a better place in this article than where I originally placed it, but in Earthing systems it stands out and is entirely unconnected from the rest of that article. No such user (talk) 15:16, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

It's hard to tell. For example, the section Earthing system#Soil resistance seems to be about the practicalities of connecting to earth, rather than the overall earthing circuitry. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me the content on rods and connectors could be in both articles; there's nothing wrong with a little redundancy. If I had to choose one article, I'd say it should definitely be in this one, Ground (electricity) refers more specifically to the actual connection to the Earth than Grounding system. Maybe the Earthing system#Soil resistance section should also be moved to this article. --Chetvorno^TALK 18:01, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

The problem with having the same content in two articles is that as different people make a series of small edits in the articles, the articles end up contradicting each other. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:54, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I think Earthing system#Soil resistance was added in the same batch as the other two, but I didn't watch the article closely and I'm a bit lazy to investigate at the moment. I considered merging it here along, but ultimately decided not to. Regardless, I think this article is in need of a cleanup – it is intended to be a broad overview, but too much material accreted over the years with no clear line of presentation. No such user (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: If the redundant sections are both based on RSs, they shouldn't be different enough that they actually contradict one another. Enormous numbers of Wikipedia articles have redundant content. In general I agree with you: I have on many occasions tried to merge content (and often have run up against opposition from the authors). A section on ground stakes is pretty minor as far as redundancy goes, but I would prefer to see it in just one article. --Chetvorno^TALK 22:18, 4 January 2021 (UTC)