Power Line to my house was broken

[RBLapham]

Electricity runs from the hot wire - through item in your house like motors, light bulbs etc, then back on the neutral line. In your fuse/circuit breaker panel the neutral is connected to a ground wire and most cases there is a ground rod connected also right by the box that the power lines enter the house. Since ground and neutral do the same thing when the neutral to the power lines is broken your house uses your ground cable instead to complete the circuit. Running this way that ground is carrying some voltage so try not to touch, but probably no danger.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Gotta be CT metering in that cabinet at that ampacity. Maybe the neutral being broken could make a CT read incorrectly. Been a while since I studied metering.

Anyway, being a single phase primary line, the neutral should carry return current to the distribution substation.
Whoever repairs that line will be reconnecting a healthy amp load right in their face. I hope they have good load make jumpers.
The driven grounds on the transformer side of the downed line must be doing a great job to keep the service voltage balanced.
Kudos to OP on a good installation.

I believe he might have said that he was the last customer on the line, so I would probably just open the pot and sleeve it back together, if not shotgun stick and bridge it with a ground because you are right there is always the possibility of voltage and or amperage on an open line downed neutral.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Electricity runs from the hot wire - through item in your house like motors, light bulbs etc, then back on the neutral line. In your fuse/circuit breaker panel the neutral is connected to a ground wire and most cases there is a ground rod connected also right by the box that the power lines enter the house. Since ground and neutral do the same thing when the neutral to the power lines is broken your house uses your ground cable instead to complete the circuit. Running this way that ground is carrying some voltage so try not to touch, but probably no danger.

Problem is a lot of driven grounds I would say most are never tested or checked for resistance and many are for decoration only they are certainly not a good reference to ground, that is why many times when the neutral is lost or broken from the power company side people have burnt up equipment and appliances, I know around here most electricians drive one 8' ground rod and that's it , we drive 16' of rod at the transformer pole and depending on where you are we may have to drive more to get it down to less than 15 ohms of resistance.

 

[BigBlue1]

Problem is a lot of driven grounds I would say most are never tested or checked for resistance and many are for decoration only they are certainly not a good reference to ground, that is why many times when the neutral is lost or broken from the power company side people have burnt up equipment and appliances, I know around here most electricians drive one 8' ground rod and that's it , we drive 16' of rod at the transformer pole and depending on where you are we may have to drive more to get it down to less than 15 ohms of resistance.

What do you measure the resistance between when installing a ground rod? Between the rod end and some other random point on the surface of the ground nearby? If it is so important to drive a long length into ground for a good contact doesn't that mean you basically have to drive another one in some distance away and test between them? Otherwise your 'poor resistance' could just be due to the poor contact of the test tool. But I must be misunderstanding something...

Rob

 

[Lineman North Florida]

What do you measure the resistance between when installing a ground rod? Between the rod end and some other random point on the surface of the ground nearby? If it is so important to drive a long length into ground for a good contact doesn't that mean you basically have to drive another one in some distance away and test between them? Otherwise your 'poor resistance' could just be due to the poor contact of the test tool. But I must be misunderstanding something...

Rob

We use a Hioki clamp on earth tester, that gives us our readings, it is a specialized tool for the purpose of checking resistance on grounds and it comes with a resistance check loop to verify the accuracy of the unit , one end is designed so the machine if working correctly will give you 1 ohm of resistance and the other end of the test loop will give 25 ohms of resistance, they work pretty good.

 

[EddieWalker]

Currently my red clay soil is very moist, so I have a really good ground. By summer, my soil will dry out and it wont be as good. I have a hot wire around my pasture that I had to put in three ground rods, ten feet apart, to get to work in the summer.

Every power pole has a copper wire running down the length of the pole into the ground. I'm not sure how deep they go, but there isn't a grown rod, just the bare wire stapled to the post.

Seems to me that I put in a ground rod when putting the meter base together, but it's not a good memory, so I'm not positive if there is one there or not. I have one ten foot ground rod at both of my panels at my house.

Is there a contact in TX to call and complain about this?

 

[ponytug]

FWIW: Around here, the ground rods at power poles are driven below the soil line. The small copper wire coming down the pole connects underground.

I have the same issue with my electric fence; in addition to the three ground rods, driven in a shaded/damper area, I have the ground attached to barbed wire fencing.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Currently my red clay soil is very moist, so I have a really good ground. By summer, my soil will dry out and it wont be as good. I have a hot wire around my pasture that I had to put in three ground rods, ten feet apart, to get to work in the summer.

Every power pole has a copper wire running down the length of the pole into the ground. I'm not sure how deep they go, but there isn't a grown rod, just the bare wire stapled to the post.

Seems to me that I put in a ground rod when putting the meter base together, but it's not a good memory, so I'm not positive if there is one there or not. I have one ten foot ground rod at both of my panels at my house.

Is there a contact in TX to call and complain about this?

Here in Florida, it's called the Public Service Commision, I'm sure Texas has something similar, I bet if you called the power company and told them that you had called in a downed neutral months ago and that at this point you are starting to see some problems like flickering lights and voltage fluctuations that someone would be out that day to fix that neutral.

 

[LD1]

FWIW: Around here, the ground rods at power poles are driven below the soil line. The small copper wire coming down the pole connects underground.

I have the same issue with my electric fence; in addition to the three ground rods, driven in a shaded/damper area, I have the ground attached to barbed wire fencing.

All the best,

Peter

Similar. Around here there is a flat thin copper plate attached to the bottom of the pole. The copper wire runs down the pole and attaches to said plate. ANd they are ~6' in the ground on a typical 7200v primary pole

 

[goeduck]

your house uses your ground cable instead to complete the circuit. Running this way that ground is carrying some voltage so try not to touch, but probably no danger.

and whatever you do, don't pee around it