Grounding Electrical Panel

By shunting excess line voltage back to the panel s neutral pole the ground current forces the circuit breaker to trip.

Grounding electrical panel.

Grounding and bonding happen simultaneously during the installation of an electrical system and branch circuits. When this happens you must bring an appropriately sized equipment grounding conductor over with the circuit to the subpanel you must not have a neutral to ground bond in the panel and the grounding electrodes are optional although highly recommended. Distance from the electrical panel nec article 250 does not specify a minimum or maximum distance between the main electrical panel and the ground rod. Alternatively you might consider connecting the ground terminal to a water pipe by means of an exposed ground wire.

This is a brief walk through of a simple grounding and bonding system and what happens with the flow of current in normal operation and in a ground fault c. They work hand in hand in order to make it safe. Because the panel must be connected to the. Grounding a main panel the ground bar is bonded internally when an external bond to earth is installed as described at the link for electrical grounding below.

If your electrical cables have metal sheathing that runs all the way to the panel the sheathing can serve as a ground path. In standard sheathed nm cable this bare copper wire is included along with the insulated conducting wires inside the cable. The tripped breaker shuts off the circuit s current preventing a potentially dangerous situation. Which scenario is recommended.

The grounding wire that runs from your electrical panel to grounding electrode helps even out voltage increases that often occur because of lightning and other causes. The wires that bond your metal piping are preventative and they only become important in the unlikely event that an electrical conductor energizes the pipe. Your service panel s ground wire prevents a line fault from becoming a shocking experience.