What causes current in neutral wire?

Fact 5: A broken neutral wire changes the phase voltages when the electrical load is unbalanced. In an unbalanced 3 phase electrical load, the line currents are different, which causes the neutral current to flow from the star point of the load to the supply star point.

Should neutral wire have voltage?

A Neutral wire must have voltage relative to something. It can’t have voltage by itself. It takes two wires to have a voltage. If it doesn’t there’s no use.

What happens if neutral and ground are connected?

The neutral is always referenced to ground at one, and ONLY one, point. If you touch the neutral to ground anywhere else, you will create the aforementioned ground loop because the grounding system and the nuetral conductor are now wired in parallel, so they now carry equal magnitudes of current.

Can neutral and ground wires touch?

Connecting Ground wire to neutral makes the ground wire hot whilst also increasing the likelihood of an electrical shock. Most circuits use three wires: hot, neutral, and ground. The hot wire is the most dangerous conductor because it is always live. If you touch a bare hot wire, it will shock you.

How high can the third-harmonic current be in a three-phase converter?

The third-harmonic can be as high as 81\% of the value of the main current! Three-phase converters are used extensively in variable speed drives and constant-voltage rectifiers. Similar to the single-phase converters, these have high sixth, ninth, etc. harmonic currents.

What is 3rd harmonic current in computer power?

When many computers, which are nonlinear loads, are connected, the neutral current — primarily 3rd harmonic — can be larger than any of the phase currents. These 3rd harmonic currents circulate in the primary (delta) of the distribution transformer that serves the portion of the system powering the computers and are dissipated as heat.

How does harmonic current affect voltage distortion?

Harmonic current flow. If the source impedance is low then the voltage distortion will be low. If a significant portion of the load becomes non-linear (harmonic currents increase) and/or when a resonant condition prevails (system impedance increases), the voltage can increase dramatically.

What is the frequency of the second and third harmonic?

The second harmonic is two times 60 Hertz, or 120 Hz. The third harmonic is 180 Hertz and so on. In our three phase power systems, the “even” harmonics (second, fourth, sixth, etc.) cancel, so we only need deal with the “odd” harmonics. This figure shows the fundamental and the third harmonic.