I have a very basic understanding of how electricity flows, so apologies in advanced if this is a dumb question. As far as I understand, electricity comes into my house and goes to my devices, and then is returned through the neutral wire to my panel, where it goes to ground.
Why can’t that energy returning from my devices through neutral be used to continue providing power instead of just going to ground?
What I think is the answer (please correct me if I’m wrong): in order for the current to even flow, the circuit needs a path to ground
In: Physics
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the electrical system works. Electricity doesn’t flow from the street to your house, through a circuit, and then into the ground. It flows from the street, through a circuit and then back out to the street.
The ground connection is basically just to provide a safe path for electricity to take back to the panel if something short circuits somewhere, once that current gets back to the panel it will then flow back out to the street and not into the ground. That’s a bit of an over simplification but for the sake of this explanation it’s good enough.
So basically electricity IS reused after leaving your house and it was just a misunderstanding about how the electrical system works that lead you to thinking it wasn’t.
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