What does a neutral do?
In: 150
Electricity comes in what’s called phases, in Europe usually three in America typically two fro residential houses. For simplicity let’s stick to the American system with two: these two phases are exact opposites, so they always have the same value but if one is positive the other is negative and because voltage adds up, if you connect the correct two cables of the two phases the resulting voltage is zero because they always cancel each other out. -> 1+ (-1)=0
Now why it used like that: let’s stick with the two phases like before. You would think to close the circuit on these two phases you would need four cables to the power station, and because the carry power they need to be big cables to keep the resistance low. But when you connect the two phases like I said above you suddenly only need three cables and only two of them need to be big because the neutral wire doesn’t carry any electricity because it’s voltage is always 0. So if we look the the power grid you can use less cables, which saves a lot of money.
Essentially you still need the neutral to actually close the circuit of the different phases but since it’s voltage is zero because of how it is connected it doesn’t carry any electrocity
ELI5: electric phases cancel each other out, hence the neutral wire with zero voltage, but you still need it to close the circuit because all electric circuits must be closed to work.Therefore Money is saved, plus other benefits of doing it like this.
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