Thanks for the comment - Yes, and Isolation would have been useful as well, it seems like a missed opportunity

Thanks very much Mark

Thanks very much JBE really appreciate you watching and commenting.

Thank you

Thanks Freezefoot. Really pleased that you continue to watch my videos

Thank you Mike

Thank you Steve

Thank you, It's the e5 podcasts that got me interested in this subject.

Thank you mickmathieson8266

Hi Cyber Smart, thank you. I use illustrator for all my videos, and I create all the drawings, I don't use stock images. With illustrator, it's just a question of spending some time getting to know it. A lot of my images are really just simple shapes. You tube has some really good tutorials on illustrator.

Thanks Adam, really please you found it useful

Thank you gcsdoncaster495, I use illustrator for most of my stuff.

Thank you 👍🏼

Exactly what I told a friend who was thinking of buying one. After I was done laughing about the concept, I told him that's not really a safe thing to do. The chance of something happening is super slim, but a chance no less. And, living in Fl with all the lightning, well yeah, if the house gets hit that blanket can get really hot!

Hi Rusko_Customs. Thanks for watching. The RCD will not see an imbalance on the tails as the tails will be after the separation of the neutral and earth.

Not unless its a si type rcd may well work issue there expensive and not commonly known about

Love video mate, After 3-4 watchs Right I'm understanding current will still flow in neutral (tail) to DNO earthing but then will travel down MET to all earthing ect because of PEN My brother works for UKPN He said often they loose the phase but we do loose the neutral, 75% phase, 25% pen Of course PEN fault is more dangerous because of all exposed parts

Could one place the RCD before the earth-neutral bond?

@@liam3284 No, an RCD is not allowed on a PEN-wire.

Same in Australia with MEN (multiple-earthed neutral) supplies, which accounts for the great majority of suburban installations. Every installation requires a connection to earth ground via an earthing rod wired to the earth link terminal/bar, which is in turn contended to the neutral link terminal/bar. Nonetheless, a broken neutral on the supply side can still cause dangerous touch voltages within the installation, depending on the effectiveness of the earth ground. Dry/sandy soil provides a high resistance earth connection which is far from ideal for earth rod purposes. So: always check! And plumbers changing out water meters need to put a jumper across the old meter before removing it. (Connecting mains earth to gas pipes in Oz is illegal.)

Thanks Roy, I don't know what the solution is, but TT is problematic in built up areas.

In Germany they have TN-C-S, on older installations up to 1973 or so TN-C. TT Is used in Italy and I think in France. Now most countries use ground rods with TN.

TT. In France all houses are TT.

Thank you selvoselvo1. Voltage detectors detect a difference in potential. If you have not got one, they can show no voltage. Some voltage detectors will give an indication that voltage has been detected.

Thanks John, Yes, always presume TNCS. Enquiries to the DNO are generally a waste of time.

Good points with the multiple grounds at every house and transformer in the US. But with a broken neutral you then rely on the ground rod loop impedance back to the transformer. Depending on that impedance it may not be low enough to trip a breaker. So same conditions apply as in video. And also with a 120 / 240 split system in the US when you do have a broken neutral you can end up with wildly different voltages on each leg depending on loads, since with no solid reference back to the transformer neutral (except ground rod) you can end up with 160 on one leg and 80 on the other. When working for an electric utility in the US I have seen quiet a few devices fried in peoples houses when the neutral broke. So the split phase system is not without it's drawbacks as well. As far as 120 / 240 split phase, the US and the few other countries that use it are the outliers. 90% or more of countries use 230V or 240V single phase, if not 230/400 or 240/415 three phase to residential as well. Benefit of 230V of course is system build out, you need a quarter of the transformers, due to less I2R loses in the secondary distribution lines. You don't need a transformer for every 5 houses and heavier gauge wire. You put one 380kVA or 500kVA and feed a whole neighborhood. Plus most house wiring is smaller as well. As well as cords on electrical devices. Took some getting used to to see basically a lampcord on a refrigerator when I moved from US to a 230V country. But, half the current, smaller conductor. As far as I know they use 30mA (even up to 300mA) RCDs on 230V systems for a few reasons. One, at 230V you will get more normal leakage to start with and two, they usually use one RCD for multiple branch circuits. Using a 6mA RCD for four branch circuits at 230V will cause nuisance tripping for sure. There are pros and cons to all systems, TT, TN-S, TN-C-S. I now live in Vietnam with a TT system and it takes some getting used to. ZERO grounds at houses or receptacles, which are two prong, unpolarized. Just neutral and hot coming in. No ground, no bonds, just straight up TT. I have had some Americans here ask me to add in a ground rod and bond their neutral to it and since you are an engineer I am sure you are well aware how bad that can end up. So a TT system shall always have an unbonded neutral to ground and when I install a ground I leave it unbonded. But, I went way off topic here.... Not saying one system is the best and the rest sub-par. They all have their benefits and drawbacks.

@@inothome Thanks for the reply, It's rare to find someone with broad knowledge. You are correct about the potential of an open neutral back to the transformer, but I believe that's very rare. Nonetheless, I have contemplated designing a device that could monitor incoming conditions with CTs on each hot leg and neutral as well as the ground current through the ground rod conductor. The concept is a 'system analyzer" that would monitor and alarm and be capable of reporting thing like balance and stray currents. There probably is little need for such a device, but I just like the concept of providing more information. There are power monitors out there but I don't believe any provide this level of detail, even though they could pretty easily add such features. A much simpler device would be a single CT on the grounding conductor right at the ground rod. It wouldn't need trip the main, but alarm anytime it saw any significant current. Pretty simple device that could easily retrofit to any system. Should really be no current flow in this conductor, however I believe some small stray currents may be observed, as in theory, it can provide a parallel path back to the transformer. As for 3 phase for residential, I don't believe we use this anywhere. 3 phase-4wire is common in commercial but I have never heard of it used in residential. I favor one transformer per home, but I know that sometimes they get shared and it's common for apartment buildings. Seems to me that shared transformers can have efficiency and balance issues on split phase services. A typical standard service today is 200 amp 240/120, If you have EV charging, electric based heat, which includes geothermal and heat pumps, a 400 amp service is not all that uncommon. I really don't see a major economic advantage to a large single transformer. These get petty costly and in practice require another level of distribution and protection systems. Personally, I'd rather spend a bit more on a safer, simpler system. If you go back a bit over 100 years ago when the US and NA went one way and Europe went another, no one was really looking at safety as a real factor in the decisions. The split phase idea was pretty ingenious really and although the US decision was driven largely the abundance and popularity of Edison's 110 volt incandescent lightbulb. but the concept of 220 volt power was also desirable. In a round about way, Edison's choice of 110 volts for his lights had a safety consideration to it. Edison lost the war of the currents with AC winning over DC, but he won economically in that his standard lights were compatible with the choice. No doubt, the 220-240 volt world as he more economical choice. On my opinion, the "240 volt world" has always been weighted more by cost above all else. Safety did not really become an issue until later after both sides were already long committed to their voltage choice! European countries took their system to their respective colonies so the 240-ish systems soon dominated most of the world. And when other neighboring countries electrified, the were largely steered by the available grid power. Canada and Mexico adopted the US system although parts of Canada industry did have 50Hz, for a time. this was mainly in the West and was mainly papermills and some steel plants. As I understand it, it mostly was about who made the Generators. AEG was 50Hz, GE was 60Hz. Very difficult to change in heavy industry because of all the motors used. I worked in a very old steel plant in the Midwest some of it dating back the very early 1900s. Some of the very old rotating machines were 25Hz. The plant made its own power and actually fed a neighboring community. We still used some 25Hz in the 70s and 80s and beyond. Cheaper than replacing huge old motors and gearboxes to get the speed and torque right. I remember a big mill drive motor that was Westinghouse serial number 003!! Mexico did have some 50Hz until the 70s, Easier to compensate for voltage differences than frequency. And then there is Japan. Generally, 100/200 volt split phase. West half of the country being 60Hz and East half being 50Hz. Pre WW2 most ll generators were AEG, post war when US was directing the rebuild of the country, they brought in GE stuff at 60Hz. I've been to both halves. IDK how accurate it is but I had heard from Japanese EEs that they did a lot of studies, concluding that 100 volts was the ideal choice for safety. Generally their electrical infrastructure is quite robust. and reliable. Their power companies are huge and somewhat hierarchical, like most industry in Japan. I don't know anyone in power distribution, but know a lot of engineers. Mitsubishi is sort of the General Electric of Japan. They make everything! They are a huge company with many divisions, I can't say I have every seen anything under designed. Most every engineer I have com across in Japan, have high ethical standards in regards to safety, But without a doubt, there is wide variability between countries. In developing countries, electric power bring opportunity, but if done rusheed or poorly engineered, it ends up undermine the whole system. You can put something together that actually works, but is full of hazards. Some places have decent standards on paper but have poor implementation and/or enforcement. Far too many untrained or poorly trained people doing electrical work. In the US we have gone from pretty well trained and educated people to what I call, "electrical installers" who really don't understand what they are doing.. Electrical work is not a DIY skill. but we see a lot of equipment designed around making it DIY. Mistakes can kill people.

@@professorg8383 Agreed, not to often to find someone to have an actual educated conversation with here on YT, so thanks for your reply as well. I am 99% sure they do make the ground current analyzers you mentioned. I do know for a fact they make open ground conductor monitors and seems to be more common in the UK, but have never seen one in person. And yeah, as far as three phase in the US residential I have not seen it. I have seen 400A services with CT metering for some huge houses, but never three phase. I have however seen quite a few three phase residential services here in Vietnam in some of the larger villas and I do think it is also common in Germany, from what some people have told me. I think the main advantages to 240 single vs 120/240 split is costs and line losses. Like you said, with 120/240 split phase you can have one transformer per house and that is fed with 1/0 triplex, maybe even 2/0 triplex. Then you have a 100A or 200A main panel in the house. Whereas with 240V systems they will have one transformer and run 4/0 or 320 (some odd size, I forget the actual size) quadplex and that will run the whole length of the street and feed 100 houses of one run of quad. Then in the houses there is no conventional main breaker panel like we are used to in the US with the heavy bus bars, clip in breakers etc... Here a typical house will be fed with a 63A service, with DIN rail mounted breakers in the main. Like they do in the UK and most of Europe as well. So there is cost savings with that too. Then some branch circuits will be as low as 6A and up to 32A. So you save on the main service drop wire size too. Instead of 1/0 triplex you'll have 2 x 10mm wire, 2 conductor here with no grounds in Vietnam. 10mm is about 8AWG for comparison. Plus all the switched, receptacles and devices will draw roughly half the current at 240 vs 120. So wiring and components are sized for less current. Wire is still rated to 600V insulation value though. My career was in substations and protective relaying, so I did not do much residential wiring in the US. Of course I did my fair share of residential wiring, but not as my career. Once I moved to Vietnam I have done a lot more residential / industrial wiring and still so crazy to see the tiny conductors used with 240 vs what we are used to in the US, since the current is roughly half for every device. My fridge only pulls 1A and the cord is no larger than speaker wire! lol Takes some getting used to wiring in a house main with 8awg or 10awg equivalent and that powers a whole house. When in the US we are used to 1/0 if not 2/0 to feed a house. Some larger houses, as I mentioned earlier, will be fed 63A, three phase 230/400V. But not many three phase loads. Just they need more than 63A of 240 to power the larger houses, so they get 63A x 3. But, the local way electricians do things here is downright scary! Not much training and just twist wires until it works..... which usually only works for a few weeks and then more issues. I fix a lot of electrical issues here. Yeah, Japan is odd with their system for sure. But, due to that it enabled devices to work on more than one voltage and frequency back in the day. Now of course all the SMPS are all dual voltage and 50 / 60Hz. So when traveling most 120V devices will still work on 240V. Until you get to heating devices... yeah, the 120V heating devices let the smoke out when plugged in to 240V. The old motor-generators were really cool devices, to go from 60Hz down to 25Hz. I have seen them in old train substations and I think they were 60 to 27Hz. Now of course with high current IGBTs and electronics it's all done electronically. Like with HVDC power lines and the converter stations. Amazing the power levels they can transmit converting AC to DC then back to AC. And to touch on line losses again, they use DC since DC doesn't have the same line loses AC does. With the stranded transmission line conductors, the higher the current, the higher the impedance due to the twists creating magnetic fields that creates more impedance and heating. Whereas with DC you only have the actual resistance of the conductor itself. So a transmission line conductor of the same size can actually transmit more DC power than AC power. And not until semiconductors became able to handle the higher currents did it them become more economical to use DC for long transmission lines. If you are curious to what a main panel looks like with DIN rail breakers in Vietnam vs the panel boards in the US here is a video Jordan did of Artesian Electrics from the UK. He was on holiday , traveling throughout SE Asia and I invited him to check out an interesting problem I was troubleshooting at a house. I did not do the install, but this is typical of what I see here... no color codes, no consistency and scary!!! And I have not been back yet, so still no idea where this fault is, but homeowner does not seem to understand what can happen with a second path to ground and who knows how good of a path, it can heat up and start a fire. It's a TT system here, so no ground supplied from utility and not common to even have a ground installed at the premise. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jZibdMibpsiYeKs.html

@@inothome "Protective relaying" You guys were the "nerds" of the power industry!! (just joking!) I've worked on building and then managing some large facilities with enormous power infrastructure. I'm wanting to say that our main 138kv sub handled about 30 Megawatts. I was not a power guy, but knew enough to be dangerous! The "power nerds" spent a lot of time and effort getting it all coordinated. Definitely a special breed of engineers! I could follow what they did, but it certainly wasn't my area of expertise! I began my long career in the 70s in a big steel company. We had about 16,000 employees at peak. It was a fully integrated mill, and for a long time we had the world's largest blast furnace. The plant was the size of a small city and ultimately I went on to a billion dollar joint venture greenfield plant. I was mainly a controls/automation guy, but got into just about all aspects of the electrical field. Started out as an industrial electrician, managed electrical maintenance and worked in engineering on the design of a huge joint venture, leading edge facility. Our joint venture was run with a petty small staff which meant everybody in management got into all areas of the industry with my main job running maintenance with crews of about 40 techs in total on several different teams. We were very much built around self directed workforce concepts. We actually made it work very well. A big difference from thee old top down style of management! But we electrical guys were also more self directed, even in that environment. It always made more sense to me, but then by our nature, we were made up of well trained responsible guys. I "retired" and went into consulting including project management of some very large projects. Finally "sem-retired" again, consulting on hand picked projects and teaching. My resume reads like a book! Over the years, I built myself a very nice shop so I could maintain the fun of hands on projects. I still come up with ideas a an excuse to buy more tools! At 70, I till like to dabble, and teach part time. Do my best to stay up on the latest tech across a wide variety of fields. I am kind of a "Jack of al trades" and master of quite a few. I grew up in the space race and when all my friends wanted to become astronauts, I wanted to become one of the engineers in white shirts with pocket protectors! Always wanted to be the guy who knew how everything actually worked! Still have not lost that drive. I love history overall and the history of tech and how it evolved across the world, When you talk about motor generator sets, I have dealt with smaller ones of multiple machines coupled together to run process lines and a few big boy that you could stand inside the stator and barely touch the other side above your head! Amazing machines!! Like you, never really worked in residential electrical, but did a lot and often got involved in troubleshooting when friends had problems. Did all my own work and strangely enough even consulted og NEC regulations! At one time or another, I have crossed paths with some of the top guys in the fields. Names that many in the industry considered legendary. I never became famous in the industry, but was considered wizard club in a few circles. So I watched the video you linked and really enjoyed it, however, I don't think it was the one you were talking about related to main panels in Vietnam. It was really cool but I don't think the one you meant to link. Have enjoyed the conversation. Rare these days to come up with intelligent commenters. That used to be part of being an '"electrical guy", but it has changed through the years and there's a lot of people in the field who have no clue of what they're doing!

@@professorg8383 Nice career you had! Yeah, relay work is fun, especially commissioning. Can be really rewarding to figure out why a scheme isn't working as the engineers expected it too. I had a similar start, but at a sewage treatment plant. I was lucky enough to bounce around in all the departments, learning and helping solve problems. There were a lot of lazy people there, so I got to fix a lot of problems no one else cared for, even though that was their job. Even as a kid I was always fixing everythign inthe neighborhood, what I find enjoyable. Also did the SCADA systems there as well, so familiar with controls. Then moved on to an electric utility, did an apprenticeship for substation electrician and like the shit plant, I was able to do a lot of stuff out of my classification. We had a small peaking plant too, so with my background with controls I ended up doing all the controls for the generators and eventually worked my way up to being the relay tech for the utility. Did everything, from relays, to gen controls, to radio systems, fiber, you name it. Left that job, took a trip around the world and decided to semi-retire at 45. Since then I have been to Antarctica twice as power plant electrician and funny you mentioned NASA. I worked a year at KSC in the high voltage department and left there about year ago, why I have so many rocket launch videos on my channel. But most people these days do not give one shit about the job, just there to get a paycheck and no idea on how the stuff works that they are working on. So even when I work it's hard to have technical conversations about the equipment. I try to teach fellow employees, but most don't really care, so disappointing. How can you fix something if you don't know how it works? (Hint: they don't, they throw parts at it in hopes to fix it). So been fun chatting here. I have worked with a guy who helped write some IEEE standards, pretty well know in the industry, Don is his first name. And like you, even though I am an electrician / relay tech by trade I am in to everything technical. Constantly learning, you will never learn everything and no one knows it all. Plus, we all make mistakes and that's part of learning. And speaking of mistakes, yeah, I did link the wrong video.... I fixed that link, but I'll link it here again. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jZibdMibpsiYeKs.html