I know that electricity doesn’t just dissolve in the ground, it must return to the power source. But once the electricity is in the grounding device, how does it find its way back to the substation if it can be relatively far away?
Edit: I know ground isn’t used in normal working mode and where I live there’s no grounding in sockets.
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> I know that electricity doesn’t just dissolve in the ground, it must return to the power source.
This is like saying that the water a river discharges into the ocean must return to the mountains where the river originated. It’s kinda theoretically true but in practice it doesn’t really matter. The Earth will be able to absorb the current – in theory a DC current would charge the Earth until current stops. In practice the Earth is huge and can absorb a hell of a lot of current while it’s charge remains negligible. It will return some current to the substation or generator so it truly does stay neutral. This almost certainly isn’t the same actual electrons or holes – just as the water raining down on the mountains probably isn’t the same as what discharged out of the river recently – but things stay in balance nonetheless.
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