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http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/floating-neutral-impacts-in-power-distribution
Introduction
If the Neutral Conductor is opened, broke or lost at either of its source side ( Distribution Transformer, Generator or
at Load side Distribution Panel of Consumer), the distribution systems neutral conductor will float or lose its
reference ground Point. The floating neutral condition can cause voltages to float to a maximum of its Phase volts
RMS relative to ground, subjecting to its unbalancing load Condition.
Floating Neutral conditions in the power network have different impact depending on the type of Supply, type of
installation and Load balancing in the Distribution.
Broken Neutral or Loose Neutral would damage to the connected load or create hazardous Touch Voltage at
equipment body.
Here We are trying to understand the Floating Neutral Condition in T-T distribution System.
This gets more complicated in three phase power, because now we have to consider phase angle, but the
concept is exactly the same. If we are connected in Star connection with a neutral, then the neutral conductor will
have zero current on it only if the three phases have the same current on each. If we do vector analysis on this,
adding up sin(x), sin(x+120), and sin(x+240), we get zero.
The same thing happens when we are delta connected, without a neutral, but then the imbalance occurs out in the
distribution system, beyond the service transformers, because the distribution system is generally a Star
Connected.
The neutral should never be connected to a ground except at the point at the service where the neutral is initially
grounded (At Distribution Transformer). This can set up the ground as a path for current to travel back to the
service. Any break in the ground path would then expose a voltage potential. Grounding the neutral in a 3 phase
system helps stabilize phase voltages. A non-grounded neutral is sometimes referred to as a floating neutral
and has a few limited applications.
Broken neutrals can be difficult to detect and in some instances may not be easily identified. Sometimes broken
neutrals can be indicated by flickering lights or tingling taps.
If you have flickering lights or tingly taps in your home, you may be at risk of serious injury or even death.
A rule-of-thumb used by many in the industry is that Neutral to ground voltage of 2V or less at the receptacle is
okay, while a few volts or more indicates overloading; 5V is seen as the upper limit.
Low Reading
If Neutral to ground voltage is low at the receptacle than system is healthy, If It is high, then you still have to
determine if the problem is mainly at the branch circuit level, or mainly at the panel level.
Neutral to ground voltage exists because of the IR drop of the current traveling through the neutral back to the
Neutral to ground bond. If the system is correctly wired, there should be no Neutral to Ground bond except at the
source transformer (at what the NEC calls the source of the Separately Derived System, or SDS, which is usually
a transformer).
Under this situation, the ground conductor should have virtually no current and therefore no IR drop on it. In
effect, the ground wire is available as a long test lead back to the Neutral to ground bond.
High Reading:
A high reading could indicate a shared branch neutral, i.e., a neutral shared between more than one branch
circuits. This shared neutral simply increases the opportunities for overloading as well as for one circuit to affect
another.
Zero Reading:
A certain amount of Neutral to ground voltage is normal in a loaded circuit. If the reading is stable at close to 0V.
There is a suspect an illegal Neutral to ground bond in the receptacle (often due to lose strands of the neutral
touching some ground point) or at the subpanel.
Any Neutral to ground bonds other than those at the transformer source ( and/or main panel) should be removed to
prevent return currents flowing through the ground conductors.
Top
Under normal condition current flow from Phase to Load to Load to back to the source (Distribution Transformer).
When Neutral is broken current from Red Phase will go back to Blue or Yellow phase resulting Line to Line voltage
between Loads.
Some customer will experience Overvoltage while some will experience Low voltage.
6) Shared neutrals
Some buildings are wired so that two or three phases share a single neutral. The original idea was to
duplicate on the branch circuit level the four wire (three phases and a neutral) wiring of panel boards.
Theoretically, only the unbalanced current will return on the neutral. This allows one neutral to do the work for
three phases. This wiring shortcut quickly became a dead-end with the growth of single-phase non-linear loads.
The problem is that zero sequence current
From nonlinear loads, primarily third harmonic, will add up arithmetically and return on the neutral. In addition to
being a potential safety problem because of overheating of an undersized neutral, the extra neutral current
Conclusion
A Floating Neutral ( Disconnected Neutral) fault condition is VERY UNSAFE because If appliance is not working
and someone who does not know about the Neutral Floating could easily touch the Neutral wire to find out why
appliances does not work when they are plugged into a circuit and get a bad shock. Single phase Appliances are
design to work its normal Phase Voltage when they get Line Voltage Appliances may Damage.
Disconnected Neutral fault is a very unsafe condition and should be corrected at the earliest possible by
troubleshooting of the exact wires to check and then connect properly.
Published at Electrical Notes & Articles