Personally I don't see any real point in messing with it. It's much easier to learn correct conventional grounding techniques than building a completely arbitrary signal ground and coordinating the entire system around it.
P.S. I've sort of accidentally built something pretty close to what I'm describing myself but it was quite unintentional since I've just been focusing on avoiding ground loops and looking at the big picture.
I think this statement may be true for the USA only. You still still use fuses in your electrical board. In our world since the early sixties an earth fault relay is mandatory and you can only achieve this with a proper ground. I would hate any piece of equipment that the live and neutral has been accidentally swapped round and the live connected to the metal chassis, that implies certain death in most cases. However you only use 115V which is probably not very lethal.
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I've seen all sort of wiring here in Sweden as well. The new and improved standards only apply to newly constructed buildings. So, old buildings will still have old wiring and so on.
The relay Nico is referring to is just a better version of a fuse, they fill the same purpose. You trip the breaker instead of getting electrocuted and burning the house down...
The safety ground has dedicated wiring to the main breaker panel and from there dedicated wiring to the next electrical junction.
In the old days I think they often tied the cold wire to the safety ground in the breaker panel somehow and you could get some weird faults. Some people would use a radiator as safety ground which could in a worst case scenario have some bad side effects. Say you live in an apartment building and you have the live and cold wire floating up till V/2 and you use the radiator as safety ground. You could inadvertently electrocute the neighbor's cat when it brushes up to a radiator...
The new standards remove the risk of such accidents.
The relay Nico is referring to is just a better version of a fuse, they fill the same purpose. You trip the breaker instead of getting electrocuted and burning the house down...
The safety ground has dedicated wiring to the main breaker panel and from there dedicated wiring to the next electrical junction.
In the old days I think they often tied the cold wire to the safety ground in the breaker panel somehow and you could get some weird faults. Some people would use a radiator as safety ground which could in a worst case scenario have some bad side effects. Say you live in an apartment building and you have the live and cold wire floating up till V/2 and you use the radiator as safety ground. You could inadvertently electrocute the neighbor's cat when it brushes up to a radiator...
The new standards remove the risk of such accidents.
0V with respect to what? Remember: there is no such thing as a voltage. You still appear not to have got it.rhythmsandy said:
Of course, if for some reason you don't like an existing voltage reference you can use two existing voltage references to make a new voltage reference which is some linear combination of the two.
Not many (if any) new residential fuse boards in the last half century.
Why would a earth/ground fault relay/breaker require a connection to Planet Earth?
This is the exact reason for the Protective Earth/Safety Ground system. It's to trip a breaker if the Live/Hot wire contacts the chassis.
Haven't seen 115V in the last half century either. The US is drifting towards 125/250V single phase power.
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