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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Grounding, meaning the actual use of a rod in the ground, is used to tell everybody what we are calling 0 volts. We have to do this because a measurement of voltage is relative to something else. For example, a 9V battery measures 9V across its terminals but will not measure 9V if I measure it to the actual ground (dirt).
The path to ground is not normally in the electrical circuit that powers your house. Wires between your house and the electricity generator (power plant, etc) carry the electricity. What your local ground is used for is to provide a better path for electricity to flow than to flow through you (shock you) if something goes wrong. The housing of all the electric things in your house (stove, microwave, etc) are connected to ground so that if something breaks, then the electricity will want to flow that direction instead of through you.
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