Facilities Support Services

Purpose of Earthing

The main reason for doing earthing in electrical network is for the safety. When all metallic parts in electrical equipment are grounded then if the insulation inside the equipment fails there are no dangerous voltages present in the equipment case. If the live wire touches the grounded case then the circuit is effectively shorted and fuse / breaker will immediately trip. When the breaker / fuse is tripped then the dangerous voltages are away.

1. Safety for Human life/ Building/Equipment
   1. To save human life from danger of electrical shock or death by blowing a fuse i.e. To provide an alternative path for the fault current to flow so that it will not endanger the user
   2. To protect buildings, machinery & appliances under fault conditions.
   3. To ensure that all exposed conductive parts do not reach a dangerous potential.
   4. To provide safe path to dissipate lightning and short circuit currents.
   5. To provide stable platform for operation of sensitive electronic equipment e. To maintain the voltage at any part of an electrical system at a known value so as to prevent over current or excessive voltage on the appliances or equipment .

2. Over voltage protection:Lightning, line surges or unintentional contact with higher voltage lines can cause dangerously high voltages to the electrical distribution system. Earthing provides an alternative path around the electrical system to minimize damages in the System.

3. Voltage stabilization:There are many sources of electricity. Every transformer can be considered a separate source. If there were not a common reference point for all these voltage sources it would be extremely difficult to calculate their relationships to each other. The earth is the most omnipresent conductive surface, and so it was adopted in the very beginnings of electrical distribution systems as a nearly universal standard for all electric systems.