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.
In: 469
On the power plug for home devices, you’ll find 3 prongs:
– A Hot/Live that supplies power
– A neutral that completes the circuit back to the grid/substation
– A ground for use in emergencies; eg. You want the chassis of your PC to be grounded, because if a live wire ever accidentally touches it and it isn’t grounded you could be shocked with 10amps.
What you are describing with no neutral completion wire is [SWER](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return). Most city wiring will not use a ground return as there is more power than in a rural system and can cause issues with [Stray Voltage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stray_voltage)
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