I'm troubling shooting the lighting and the entrance to our community and have run into a problem. I thought I was just going to replace some bulbs, maybe a ballast, but things have gotten worst quickly. Turns out that with the main circuit off I still have 120 between the neutral and ground. I start looking around and found the wire from the ground bus arking away like mad where it connects to the grounding spike under the box. I disconnect everything (the 1 circuit in the box). With the main still off, I continue to get 120 between the neutral wire from the utility and the ground? Surely this can't be right? Does this point to a short somewhere on the utility side? I need help as I don't want this to go on now that I'm aware of the issue...

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Originally Posted by reefdiverbob

I'm troubling shooting the lighting and the entrance to our community and have run into a problem. I thought I was just going to replace some bulbs, maybe a ballast, but things have gotten worst quickly. Turns out that with the main circuit off I still have 120 between the neutral and ground. I start looking around and found the the wire from the ground bus arking away like mad where it connects to the grounding spike under the box. I disconnect everything (the 1 circuit in the box). with the main still off, I continue to get 120 between the neutral wire from the utility and the ground? Surely this can't be right? Does this point to a short somewhere on the utility side? I need help as I don't want this to go on now that I'm aware of the issue...

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Sounds like you have an open neutral problem.If everything is off in the building your checking, it's probably on the utility side.