have you ever wondered what all these terms means grounded and grounding neutral bonding
all of that sometimes a neutral is a grounded conductor but not always let's get into it [Music]
all right so to start out there's a few terms that I think are really important to understand once we
get into code we start talking about a grounded conductor and a lot of times there's confusion
once somebody starts trying to size a neutral conductor figure out what size it is because they
call it a grounded conductor and they don't really realize you're not just sizing it using a table
there's a lot more to neutral reduction sizes and they're completely different parts of code so I'm
not going to get into whole like neutral sizing video but somebody asked me a question recently
and they were talking about 250.102 C1 which is a table specifically talking about like using
these grounded conductors but they're looking in article 250.102 C1 under bonding conductors
and it's specific to bonding so it's not actually talking about grounded conductors which is 250.24
um but there's this whole 220.61 neutral reduction size so like there's a lot of confusion because
sometimes code will call it a neutral and then sometimes they'll call it a grounded conductor
but are actually talking about two different things so a grounded conductor within itself
is a type of conductor it is a conductor that is intentionally brought to Earth
a neutral is that but not every grounded conductor is a neutral conductor so
just had to preface all of that so let's get into it first thing that we need to understand is what
a grounding electrode is when we're talking about a gec if you're like in forums or talking
and you keep seeing people throw the word gec out there they're talking about a grounding electrode
conductor specifically that is the portion of the grounding electrode system that we run a
conductor to so like right here we run a conductor from a ground bus down to a ground rod the ground
rod is a grounding electrode so that conductor in between is called a grounding electrode conductor
over at a utility pole same thing they'll drive ground rods down at the bottom of them and then
they'll have a conductor that goes down there intentionally grounding this system so that's
a grounding electrode conductor it's just the conductor that goes to the electrode electrodes
can be a lot of different things so if you start looking at article 250 in code they're going to
talk about Metal underground piping systems or large metal underground structures or they might
talk about ground rods there might be ground plates that you can bury there's all kinds of
different things that you can use as a grounding electrode sometimes we use the rebar in slab so
like grounding electrodes there's a whole bunch of them but the conductor that you run to said huge
piece of metal to like establish continuity with Earth that's the grounding electrode conductor and
its purpose is entirely different than equipment grounding conductors or EG sees which we will get
here in into in a minute grounding electrodes were not always installed so a lot of times like old
school wiring systems it was just a hot neutral and that was it there was no ground as reference
to Earth and the systems worked just fine it has nothing to do with the functioning of a system or
clearing faults you know any of that stuff it's a completely different thing equipment grounding
conductors and bonding conduct conductors are what are used to actually trip Breakers so just
keep those things in separation in your mind now we have bonding jumpers bonding jumpers
are a whole different thing bonding is not grounding bonding is not grounded bonding just
means taking one thing that's metal and another thing that's metal and jumping them together
connecting them together so that they are one continuous bigger piece of metal now that's a
bonding jumper and there's a couple of different bonding jumpers and code that it talks about we
talk about a main bonding jumper and that is the bonding jumper that takes our ground bus
and attaches it to our neutral bus a lot of like Schneider panels they just have a green screw
and you tap the back of that screw it goes from the neutral bus through the can the actual metal
can which is down below making contact with the ground bus so it's by putting that screw in that
is a main bonding jumper it's a it's a screw type of main bonding jumper you could instead of using
that just run an actual conductor from the neutral bus all the way over to the ground you could do
like this like that's a conductor but sometimes there's just going to be a screw that like well
so the screw be on this side sometimes there's just a screw that Taps that neutral in so that
it's making continuity with the can all the way over to the the ground bus and that's how it's
making that that Bond it's making those pieces of metal one piece of metal so the main bonding
jumper is always the bonding jumper that connects all of our grounds to our neutral in our panel
specifically at the panel next we've got a supply side bonding jumper so sometimes when we're
talking about like any grounds that are leaving the panel and going out into the field into
like equipment that's one like location within a circuit that we're thinking about bonding things
anything before the breaker the main first main disconnect at the service that goes back into say
like a utility meter goes up to the pole all of this stuff from like this point backwards is all
considered the supply side there's no ground established yet we're not bringing in a green
ground this way and tapping grounds and stuff like that we never do that we just bring our unground
conductors which are our black and our red and we bring our neutral or our grounded conductor
in with it and then once we get in here then we start establishing our grounds because now we're
going to have a grounding electrode that goes out to the Earth again has nothing to do with anything
I'm just mentioning it because it's helpful to think that all of these grounds come together
from that point from the ground where we've got our main bonding jumper we can run a separate
jumper because this can over here is metal and it's not actually bonded to anything and
it needs to be everything that is metal that's touching anything around wires needs to be bonded
together and it has to have a way for you to be able to clear fault current so we have to bond
this can with a jumper right here to the ground so that way there's a way for it to get through
neutral and go back and actually complete a circuit and clear a fault open a breaker
so this little section right here this little jumper this is called the supply side bonding
jumper it's coming from the supply side and it's bonding everything that's on the supply side but
it's not going anywhere else out in the field so we're saying that it's a bond that's happening
before a breaker it's just on the supply side going to supply side equipment is a better way
that you can think about that so that is a supply side bonding jumper next is the system bonding
jumper so you could have a separately derived system which might be a Transformer that's out in
the field somewhere where you're establishing an entirely new circuit there's a primary side of a
circuit and then there's the secondary side of the circuit the secondary starts a brand new circuit
so they consider that separately derived it's not the primary circuit coming from the utility
company to the secondary power system it's the primary that's coming into the Transformer that
is being separated and deriving a new source of power through that secondary so we consider
that a separately derived system so it was the system bonding jumper can go in a separately
derived system that's how I always remember it all that is is like say in our Transformer we've got
like a y uh secondary in our Transformer meaning that all of one side of each one of the windings
are touching each other at the XO terminal well we take our XO terminal and we run a jumper a bonding
jumper a system bonding jumper from there to the actual casing of the Transformer because it's a
big old metal Transformer plus we might have any of our equipment grounds that are like going in
coming out all of that are going to bond together at XO so that bonding that we do to establish
neutral to ground bonding in a separately derived system is called a system bonding jumper
all right so that's all the bonding that was the grounding electrodes let's talk about this whole
idea of intentionally grounding something which is where they get the whole neutral is a grounded
conductor I know I just said grounding it is intentionally grounding but like essentially
it's intentionally grounded that's going to make more sense because they're calling
the neutral a grounded conductor not a grounding conductor grounding is specifically for equipment
so we can think of a neutral as intentionally grounded intentionally brought to Earth it
doesn't have to be the circuit's still going to work just fine if it's not
but it is intentionally grounded therefore we are calling it a grounded conductor in addition to
it being a neutral so we call neutral a grounded conductor but not every grounded conductor in code
is a neutral and that's where this whole sizing neutrals thing gets really weird because in part
two of article 250 in the National electrical code we have this grounded systems terminology and it
just means how we're grounding how we're earthing the system not talking about how are we neutraling
the system how are we sizing and neutral has nothing to do with that it's just talking about
any kind of conductor that is a grounded conductor that's intentionally grounded this is how we deal
with it then in article 250.102 C1 we have this term it's grounded conductors and bonding jumpers
supply side bonding jumpers all of that because we use table 250.102 C1 to figure out what the sizes
of those are but it's like wait didn't we just imp part 2 say grounded conductors are over here well
yes but no that's system grounding it's grounded systems it's a different thing than having just
a bonding jumper so this whole 250.102 the thing is in part four of article 250 and that all deals
with bonding but they have to use that same table because bonding and a grounded conductor a lot of
times the same thing so since there's a table 250.102 C1 and then there's article 250.102 C1
even though it's only really talking about bonding they have to put the word grounded with it because
the grounded conductors in part 250.24 actually deal with the same table so that's the only
reason grounded is in there if you look around through 250.102 C1 there's no other mention to
neutral or grounded conductors it's just in the title everything in there is all bonding jumpers
bonding conductors anyways moving on they are intentionally grounding A system that means of
doing that is a grounded conductor so the neutral is now grounded because there's something touching
ground with it and then lastly we have equipment grounding conductors so equipment grounding
conductors or egcs you're going to see all the time in code anytime you run a circuit out to a
motor or like a piece of equipment or something receptacle you're running a ground with it that
ground is actually called an equipment ground or an equipment grounded conductor so it's actually
to ground that piece of equipment now it's not saying that it's bringing it to Earth for some
reason it's actually there so that it can trip and clear a fault it's actually connected to neutral
it's bonded to neutral and that's the reason that we run equipment grounding conductors it
just so happens that they go out to the panel outside where we have the ground rod where we
are intentionally grounding the entire system so technically the equipment grounding conductor is a
conductor that is intentionally grounded you know it is brought to Earth but it's not the function
of it it's not the reason for it it does help to like displace energy down down into Earth during
a fault yes but the intention of the equipment grounding conductor is to clear a fault that's
the biggest importance reason why we do all of that um I guess it's a little arguably that the
reason that we do it is the earth too but my point is if we took the grounding electrode
out of the situation and threw it away and just ran an equipment ground and bonded at the service
panel everything would still work just fine so that's why I'm saying that's the purpose of it
so equipment grounding conductor we've got a panel right we've got our Transformer up here
we're feeding down a black and a red we have a breaker and two pole 30 whatever we run that out
and say there's like a break in the circuit and then it just keeps going at this break
we have say we had like two different conduits or something like that or we had like uh two
junction boxes where we ran from the motor side to the first junction box and then from this
junction box goes to the panel so there's an air gap in between that we need to jump that equipment
ground and conductor together so when you're jumping two different pieces of an equipment
grounding system together the jumper in between there is called an equipment bonding conductor
because you're just continuing the equipment grounding system but you're bonding two pieces
of it together to make them one so it's still a bonding jumper you may think all these things
are completely unnecessary and I'm a little on the side of agreeing with you everything just
used to be called a bonding jumper and then they were like well there's lots of bonding
jumpers so like let's let's at least see like this is the main bonding jumper that we're
talking about every other bonding jumper is just a bonding jumper and then as the years have gone
on they're like well there's the equipment bonding jumper or there's the supply side
you know so they just want to be able to talk about where we're at in a system to know which
conductor we're talking about but all bonding jumpers are sizes the same way so like it it
doesn't really matter but it kind of does matter the more technical you want to be with things
um the more speaking about it correctly actually matters so uh equipment grounding conductor that
is coming from a panel to a piece of equipment it yes is intentionally grounded that doesn't matter
it'll still work it's bonded to neutral so it's almost like calling it an equipment
grounding conductor just confuses it but I understand why they do that because it is
intentionally grounded and then if there's two different parts to the system J box here jbox
here you got to get them connected you run an equipment bonding conductor to them so that is
all it's way longer than I wanted to be and it was way more convoluted and code article please
leave some comments below if you have any comments questions concerns whatever I'm happy to do more
videos I will probably do I don't know I might not actually do like a sizing neutral conductor
thing for YouTube I might do that for a members thing and make you pay for it that's a really long
convoluted process with a lot of different answers to it so anyways leave some comments below if you
guys want to hear more about anything specifically love you crazy people and I'll see in the next one