using earth instead of neutral could damage the electronic devices?

[lyo]

Hi all,



I know that using earth instead of neutral not safe and illegal, but my question if I accidentally used earth as neutral could this affect on the operation of the device ? could this connection damage the electronics device?

regards

 

[betwixt]

There are too many variables to answer that question but it certainly is not advisable.
On most modern electricity installations it would immediately operate the RCD protection device and cut all the power off.

Brian.

 

[Easy peasy]

also if you do that and then some idiot rewires the plug wrongly - or you plug it into a socket that has been wrongly wired - you get phase on the case and a bit of a ( possibly lethal ) shock ...

 

[dick_freebird]

In my buildings and every panel I've looked at,
neutral is bonded to earth at a common set
of bus-bars.

Now, when you get to remote equipment the
ground lead can be much smaller than the
neutral as current is not expected to flow in
the earth leg. Depending on just -how- you
miswire things, and the details of the entire
plant between panel and load-point, you
could find you're overtaxing the ground wire
with potentially flammable results.

It ought to be pretty difficult to screw up the
wiring as described, what with color coding
and the ground either being bare or green.

 

[c_mitra]

Your local distribution transformer gets only three phase connections as input: there is no neutral. The neutral is locally produced as the earth point as serves as the return path for all single phase loads. However, the earth connection at the socket output is a local earth and is independent of the neutral wire. This is a safety feature, although many modern power tools do not have a earth connection. The output of the local distribution transformer usually has a neutral and you can make it out easily because it is the thinnest one out of the four (usually colored black).

If you measure with a multimeter the potential between the earth and the neutral, you will find only a small number (few volts at most; large values may indicate high unbalanced load) and connecting the load to the earth shall not cause any problem except perhaps tripping the RCCB.

But this cannot damage any electronic or electrical device because the circuit just wants a return path and both neutral and earth can provide the same.

 

[FvM]

The earthing scheme reported by dick_freebird is named TN-C-S according earthing systematic, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthing_system

As far as I'm aware of, TN-C-S is mostly used in Europe. Despite of PE and N being bridged in the building switchboard, safety standards nevertheless don't permit PE currents larger than a few mA. Exceptions exist for stationary devices