The statement is predicated on the entire system being ungrounded (i.e., everything on your side of the transformer). Voltage is relative; if there's no prior connection between two systems, when one gets connected to the other, the systems become referenced to each other at that connection, through which no current can flow (since it's the only connection), and hence exhibits zero voltage across it. In this example, the other half of the power outlet is then 120 V relative to whatever the person is touching (presumably Earth ground).
(Also side note: in the US system with hot and neutral, neither is 60 V from ground. Hot is 120 V from ground, neutral is (ideally) 0 V. Only in a 240 V system are the voltages symmetric.)
Note also that the typical residential electric service in the US is actually 240V split-phase; the distribution transformer secondary winding is center-tapped, with the center tap grounded and brought in as the neutral. Phase-to-ground is 120V, phase-to-phase is 240V. Normally, 240V is reserved for heavy-draw appliances like large air conditioners, ovens, arc welders, and so on.
In some apartment buildings, commercial properties, and densely-populated neighborhoods, two phases of a 208V three-phase supply are used instead, which still yields a 120V phase-to-neutral voltage. Large appliances often have a wiring option to operate on 208V.
[ETA: The second hot wire is usually red, and 208V three-phase systems use black, red, and blue for the hot wires.]
> Note also that the typical residential electric service in the US is actually 240V split-phase; the distribution transformer secondary winding is center-tapped, with the center tap grounded and brought in as the neutral.
Why is this the case historically? It's been a huge annoyance for me personally, as I want to use my arc welder in my garage that has only 120v circuits, as opposed to my cluttered shop that has a 240v circuit available.
> I want to use my arc welder in my garage that has only 120v circuits, as opposed to my cluttered shop that has a 240v circuit available.
I hear you on this; I'm in the situation where neither my small shop nor my garage has 220-240V available. Also, I don't know if my current service will allow for another such circuit - in any case, I'd have to likely add an auxiliary panel to accommodate the extra breaker(s) needed, as my main panel is full.
But I do have one possibility - and maybe you do, too?
From the door to my garage that leads into the house, the laundry room is just around the corner. In that room, I have both the dryer and water heater, on separate circuits. So in theory, I have the voltage needed.
Now, the water heater is hard-wired, so nothing I can really do there (well, I could - but I won't). The dryer, on the other hand, is plugged into a 220V outlet (as they usually are).
So - what I have considered doing is making an extension cord; one with a plug for the dryer, and on the other end a socket for the welder. In case you aren't aware, the plug on a welder for 220VAC is different than the plug on a dryer. And technically, you're not supposed to use a welder on such a socket (there's something in the code that forbids it).
But people have been making and using such extension cords for almost the entire time such welders have been available, and I have not heard of any reasons against them. You can even purchase such cords thru some places, so they're even legal to sell, purchase, and own. It may be something having to do with the strain a welder puts on the plug and extension; that the extra connection can heat up too much?
Anyhow, maybe you could do something like this; get an IR thermometer and monitor the temperature of parts as you weld and use the circuit; see if there is any issues in that regard.
Another thing I've thought about doing, since the wall where the socket for the dryer is shared with the garage, is mounting a junction box, bringing in the 220, then tapping off it inside the junction box to a new socket and the old dryer socket. Then I could plug right into the socket in the garage without needing a custom "extension cord", so long as I unplug the dryer (maybe add a cover to both as well that can be locked to prevent both being used at the same time).
Something tells me, though, that such a setup would not be up to code - but I don't know for certain.
In North America, The different shapes of plug for the same voltage represent different current-carrying capacities for the wires they’re attached to. There are twist-lock and non-locking versions of each.
If you’re using an adapter to plug a high-current device into a low-current socket, there is a risk of fire from putting too much current through the in-wall wiring. Tripping a circuit breaker is more likely, though.
If the plugs differ and both are the straight blade type, it's because something relevant to safety differs, probably which wires are present (white neutral or green safety ground) and/or the current rating.
You can get in trouble if the welder expects a safety ground or neutral intended to carry current that you don't have (neither is safe substitute for the other). You can get in trouble if you connect the welder to a circuit that can deliver more current than it's designed for and something fails (it was designed to fail safely assuming that the circuit is limited to X amps by a fuse or breaker).
If the dryer outlet has all the wires the welder wants (and some extra) and the same current rating, an adapter that connects the desired wires and ignore the rest should be safe as long as it's made from big enough wire.
If you are doing this, make sure to use a double pole circuit breaker on the lower current side to make sure that any electrical faults are interrupted correctly.
> The statement is predicated on the entire system being ungrounded (i.e., everything on your side of the transformer).
This is not possible for AC due to capacitive coupling between everything. In a large-ish ungrounded AC distribution system, a fault from one phase to ground will carry a large amount of current due to capacitive coupling from the other phases to ground. To reduce this current, an inductor can be installed from neutral to ground [0].
Even for use within a single room, a safe isolated AC system is complicated [1]. If you’re doing benchtop AC experiments, you should not use an isolation transformer — you should use a GFCI.
In fact, you can buy transformers that are ungrounded to isolate the supply and make it safe to touch either wire. When combined with an RCD, this makes a very safe system
In the UK, isolated transformers are how we allow shaver sockets in bathrooms. You touch one of the wires and (via wet feet a pipes) you create the path to ground, which is bad. But because the wire is only live when there's a complete circuit, it's safe. You'd have to grasp both sides of the circuit with different hands to cause major problems
A bonus for the shaver socket is that it is often switchable, so a 120V shaver can be plugged in. This is less of an issue now, with newer shavers having circuitry to allow them to run on anything from 100-240V.
But the ungrounded transformer prevents the fault currents that the RCD would detect, so unless I am mistaken there is no scenario where a RCD would provide additional protection beyond an ungrounded transformer.
Are you saying that the DC voltage difference is always 0 VDC? Since much of the article is about the necessity of grounding your electric distribution network to prevent high static voltages, what makes this system different? Instead, I think it's more likely that the difference in DC voltage can vary significantly.
Are you saying that the AC voltage at all points in the isolated system is always 0 with reference to earth ground? Again, this seems unlikely. If you take 3 simultaneous measurements (Isolated A to earth ground, Isolated B to earth ground, and Isolated A to Isolated B), I have trouble believing that you will find 120V between A and B and 0 between both and ground.
So rather than there being "zero voltage", I think the reason for safety is related to dfox's answer below: the system is limited in how much current it can put through you, and it's the amperage that harms you rather than the voltage. You might get an initial static shock, but the AC amperage is going to be small enough not to harm you. But I'm still confused why this is the case. I think it may have more to do with fusing and generation power than with isolation per se.
Yes on the side note. The article does a great job of explaining (at least for the US) why neutral and ground are distinct, and why hot and neutral are not symmetric.
First, a side note: when you, as someone unfamiliar with the subject matter, say things like "I have trouble believing" and "this seems unlikely" to someone with subject knowledge (I have an EE degree), you come across as condescending. "I don't understand" is a better way to phrase your confusion than doubting the veracity of the person you're asking for help from, and makes them and others more likely to continue to help you.
> Are you saying that the DC voltage difference is always 0 VDC?
AC vs. DC makes no difference in the statement I made. However note also that DC is not transferred through transformers; any DC offset with respect to earth ground in the distribution system will not be seen by the customer.
> Are you saying that the AC voltage at all points in the isolated system is always 0 with reference to earth ground?
No. But if you measure one at a time, with no other connection between the systems, you will see this. If you measure two simultaneously, what you see will depend on the relative impedance of the two measurement devices. This is easily experimentally verifiable.
> So rather than there being "zero voltage", I think the reason for safety is related to dfox's answer below: the system is limited in how much current it can put through you, and it's the amperage that harms you rather than the voltage.
No. Those statements are not separable. See andyjpb's sibling comment.
Sorry, this wasn't my intent. From your other answers over the years, I recognize your username and actually have a lot of respect for your expertise. I don't doubt your veracity at all, I was just trying to make sure you were focused on the question I was interested in, and encouraging you to go deeper in your explanation of why the (to me) counterintuitive answer might be true. Your side note in the original about the difference between neutral and hot wires made me think you might be answering a different question that the article already covered well, and that I feel I understand.
> However note also that DC is not transferred through transformers; any DC offset with respect to earth ground in the distribution system will not be seen by the customer.
Yes. I was talking solely about the measured DC on the isolated side. This is why I think we might be talking about different question, or at least at aiming at different levels.
Maybe (if you'd be willing to continue) I can substitute a related question that I think addresses my misunderstanding: how is an isolated transformer (powered by an AC current) different in safety considerations than a small electrical generator (powered by spinning magnets)? In my possibly mistaken mental model, a small generator is "safe" in the same way that small transformer would be, but as it grows larger the potential for hazard increases. Is this intuition wrong?
> Yes. I was talking solely about the measured DC on the isolated side.
Ah sorry my mistake. I thought you meant "distribution system" as in "the grid".
Yes, safety-wise, grounding (as opposed to isolation) protects from shocks due to DC static charge, precisely by providing a reference point so that the isolated system cannot "float away". However note that that DC charge is temporary: as soon as something gets "shocked" by it, it is discharged. It is still a safety concern, but of a different nature than getting a continuous shock from AC.
(To further clarify: my initial response to your statement about "60 V" only pertains to the AC voltage intentionally present in a system.)
Additionally (I think the article gets into this, but it is long and I am short on time), isolation is not sufficient for household safety because it only protects against a single accidental connection. As soon as a second, different, point on the AC system makes an accidental connection, you have a circuit and (potentially lethal) current will flow. And, given the number of appliances in modern homes, it's not unlikely that one of them might have an accidental connection to earth ground. If a human then makes a second connection to the other leg of the circuit via some other appliance, game over.
The modern grounding system solves this by forcing all appliances to be designed in such a way that either it's "impossible" for a person to contact either leg of the circuit, or that the entire casing of the appliance is connected to earth ground, so that if the case does get connected to a live wire, the circuit breaker gets tripped. (However I'm approaching the limits of my knowledge here – I have no training as an electrician – so won't make any claims as to whether this is the primary function of the grounding system, vs. preventing static charge.)
BTW if you're interested in this stuff, any material you find online by Mike Holt is very good. He is an unofficial authority on all things US electrical code.
Would refer to NEC 250.21 for discussion of "ground detector" as it relates to the detection accidental first ground connections in ungrounded systems.
When you say things like “you come across as condescending”, the author can feel hurt, because the story in their mind is that a friction in this one interaction is seen as an inherent flaw of the author or of their writing. Hurting your interlocutor’s feelings can actually further sabotage constructive communication, if that is your goal.
I’ve found more success by communicating my own feelings as directly as possible, without theorizing. For example, “When you asked me a question about my area of expertise, and then dismissed my advice, I felt disrespected, because it makes me think that you never sincerely wanted my help in the first place. Do you?”
While I'd strongly prefer that colanderman not be offended, given that he was offended, I'm glad that he voiced his offense as bluntly as he did. Yes, it hurts to think that my writing is that unclear, but I've got to own the audience's reaction even if (especially if) it's not the reaction I was aiming for.
There is no way to have a fully isolated system. At best you get either a static charge or at worst, multiple the voltage and same current flowing to actual Earth due to capacitance. As in literal ground.
Most isolators end at some megaohms in a range of temperatures and non-negligible capacitance. (They're used as capacitor fill for that reason.)
Useful personal isolation and grounding is meant to strike the balance where you still get trickle grounded while not being fully isolated and accumulating dangerous charge.
It might be more intuitive if you think of the wires as the two sides of a battery. You can safely touch either the + or - side of a battery, even a high voltage one.
When you have a power source it needs two wires to make a current flow: a wire "out" and a wire "back". You're only part of the circuit if you're connected to both sides.
When the two wires are not connected to anything, there is infinite resistance between them.
If you grab one side then there's no path through you to the other side so no current flows: the resistance between the two wires is still infinite.
Due to Ohm's law, (V=IR), if the current through you is zero then the voltage across you is also zero. The hand touching the wire is at the same voltage as the rest of your body.
So you "float up" to whatever voltage the wire you are touching is at.
If you complete the circuit then current starts to flow. The shock you receive is related to the current that flows through you. However, even tiny currents cause a big shock because humans are quite sensitive to currents in the micro or milliamps range as that's more than our nervous system uses to move our muscles.
> When you have a power source it needs two wires to make a current flow: a wire "out" and a wire "back". You're only part of the circuit if you're connected to both sides.
Wait, does this apply to AC too? I always believed AC can create current even if the loop isn't closed. Say you have an exposed AC wire and touch it; I'd expect you to get a burn at the place you're touching, as the electrons from your finger at the contact point are pulled into the wire and pushed back to the finger, at 50 or 60 Hz. In general, isn't this how RF burns work?
However, RF is more complicated. The difference between "RF" and "AC" is a matter of what materials and frequencies are involved and how you are using them.
Terrestrial RF systems rely on the Earth as a ground conductor. It becomes more complicated because the impedance (like an AC version of resistance <waves hands>) of a material (such as your body between the antenna and ground) will change depending on frequency. Once a circuit it in place, the impedance mismatch between your finger and the thing it is touching will cause energy to build up at that interface.
This is similar to how light diffracts when it moves from one material to another and you can see the boundary because some energy builds up there and is scattered.
You won't get a burn if there is no circuit.
...but if you are fully enclosed in an RF field, you may get little circuits forming because your body is in contact with that field, and therefore referenced to it, and the potential of the field might vary across your body.
RF creates an electrical field across your body, which then causes a current inside you which makes heat. At 50/60Hz the wavelength is planet-sized, so that effect is nil.
Your body also has a little bit of effective grounding just by existing inside a room, but that's modeled as "a 100pF capacitor in series with a 1.5kΩ resistor". Charging a 100pF capacitor to 120 volts 120 times a second comes out to 0.2 milliamps, which is not going to burn anything. 0.6 milliamps on a 240 volt 50Hz supply. And that's only if your current source is badly isolated. The better it's kept away from the local ground, the less flow you'll see.
Thank you, and I think I agree with everything you say. Yes, at steady state, as long as you don't complete a circuit, no current flows. Helicopters can be used to do live repairs on high voltage power lines, and if the pilot keeps the copter from running into anything, no one dies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgrN0fyDRsQ
Maybe what I've failed to make clear is that my real question is about the relative difference in safety of the isolated transformer as used in a "razors only" plug and the normal breaker protected outlets used in US houses. For both of them, you could stand on a dry wooden ladder and momentarily grab either wire. But the focuses on the increased safety of the isolated transformer. I'm trying to understand what exactly about this system provides for the increased safety.
From what I can tell, everything in your answer applies to both systems. It's the difference in safety between the systems that I don't feel I understand.
"Normal breaker connected outlets used in US houses" are already connected to ground on one side. If you grab the neutral side, you will (ideally) get no shock. If you grab the phase side then you'll complete the path to the other side, through ground.
An isolating transformer is a 1:1 transformer where the input can be referenced one way and the output another.
The output is not connected to ground on either side so when you grab one of the sides, that's the first time it gets referenced to ground. ...and then the explanation continues as per my previous post.
There are a large number of serious errors in this comment which I will try to address.
> Are you saying that the DC voltage difference is always 0 VDC?
Measured across the only connection between two otherwise isolated systems, yes.
> Since much of the article is about the necessity of grounding your electric distribution network to prevent high static voltages, what makes this system different?
The size of the system makes a big difference. The power grid is large enough that you have to worry about things current induced by geomagnetic fields, lightning, solar activity, etc. Lightning has a high enough voltage that it breaks down insulators that would otherwise isolate two systems.
Basically, no system is perfectly isolated from another. It is a question of how much leakage current you have compared to how much current you are using to get work done. With ordinary home wiring, leakage current is negligible, because the resistance of the leakage current paths (many MΩ) is huge compared to the equivalent resistance of the circuit (maybe 100Ω).
Your home wiring system cannot withstand a lightning bolt, it would destroy much of the electronics in your house. The power grid must withstand lightning bolts on a regular bases.
> Instead, I think it's more likely that the difference in DC voltage can vary significantly.
Why do you think this?
There are real electricians and engineers on HN, people with domain knowledge who aren’t guessing but have actually designed power supplies or fixed faulty home wiring systems.
> So rather than there being "zero voltage", I think the reason for safety is related to dfox's answer below: the system is limited in how much current it can put through you, and it's the amperage that harms you rather than the voltage. You might get an initial static shock, but the AC amperage is going to be small enough not to harm you.
Some errors:
- House wiring is not limited in how much current it can put through you. It will kill you dead, given the opportunity. The fuse box or circuit breakers won’t prevent you from being electrocuted, they are there to prevent fires.
- Phrases like “it’s the amperage that harms you rather than the voltage” are a bit simplified. The relationship between voltage and current is fixed. Recall Ohm’s law for resistors, you cannot have current without voltage (except in a superconductor).
The reason why touching one wire is “safe” is because the return path for the current is usually very high resistance—it goes through your shoes to the floor, and through the floor back into the circuit somewhere. This is usually a dubious path for current. But there are a lot of reasons why there might be a better path for current—maybe you are touching something made of metal, maybe the floor is wet and you are not wearing shoes, maybe…
This is why one wire was chosen to be “neutral”, so it would be “safe” to touch even if there was a good path for current. But it turns out that this safety disappears as soon as there is a wiring problem in the house, or whenever there is significant ground current, or one of several other dangerous failure modes, so this is why we have the third ground pin.
I misunderstood that part during my first read, so I would like to add a few clarifications:
> > Are you saying that the DC voltage difference is always 0 VDC?
> Measured across the only connection between two otherwise isolated systems, yes.
The systems are isolated, so there is no fixed potential between them, their "DC" potential difference is therefore random (unknown quantity of excess/missing electrons) before they are connected, and you can have charge transfer if you connect both, that will balance the extra electrons on both sides. Electrons will flow in a way that the resulting density is uniform, like repulsing magnets. Therefore, there is no potential difference between any point in these two systems (barring local differences -- like a battery--, or at the very least, no potential difference across the connecting cable).
An analogy that could or could not help is trough gravitational potential energy: take two water buckets, isolated. The potential across them is the height difference between their water lines. We didn't specify where we left the buckets, so it is random. Now if we connect the bottom of the buckets, the system will find its way to the "ground state", or lowest energy state: the water line in both buckets will align (Communicating vessels), and you therefore have no DC potential across those: connect an extra piece of tubing, nothing will flow.
This analogy is quite powerful and can be used for capacitors, diodes, etc. (as most flux/potential analogies). It has its limits, though.
>> Instead, I think it's more likely that the difference in DC voltage can vary significantly.
>
>Why do you think this?
Because as per the linked article, the absolute voltage potential of the earth in a local area can vary significantly over time. This make me think that the difference between a small isolated system and the earth ground must vary significantly. As you point out, everything actually is coupled, there is a time constant involved, but at least immediately after a nearby lightning strike you should have a significant difference. Because of the small capacitance of the isolated system, I'd expect you might see a high initial value that would soon (scale depending on the meter and the capacitance) decay to zero. Do you disagree?
> House wiring is not limited in how much current it can put through you
Absolutely agreed. Per the article, I'm referring to the supposed safety of an isolated transformer used a "razors only" outlet. In addition to having an intentionally small transformer, this system also has an intentionally very small fuse.
> The reason why touching one wire is “safe” is because the return path for the current is usually very high resistance
Yes. I guess the part that I'm failing to make clear is that I'm asking about the articles differentiation between isolated transformers and US standard circuits. In both cases, in normal dry clothed circumstances, there is normally a high resistance to any return circuit through your body. I'm still having trouble seeing the difference between the safety of the isolated system and the standard system. Most of the answers here (including yours) would seem to apply equally to both cases. I feel I understand this, just not the way in which the article explains the safety of isolated transformers.
(Also side note: in the US system with hot and neutral, neither is 60 V from ground. Hot is 120 V from ground, neutral is (ideally) 0 V. Only in a 240 V system are the voltages symmetric.)