[mrtomwj]

I had a BGE (local power company) service person come out to investigate what I believe to be an open/loose neutral problem. The service person did not believe there to be a problem. (and didn't even seem to understand that power traveled in a loop and needs a return path) When a clamp-on amp meter is applied to each of the main loads in my panel, amps are seen coming in as there should be (~15A on one, ~5 on the other at the time of the test) When the meter is applied to the neutral, zero amps are shown returning through the service neutral (not even a fraction of an amp, totally zero). When the meter is applied to the house grounding (connected to pipes) anywhere from 5-10 amps are flowing through the ground. This seems to point to no current returning through the service neutral and all flowing through the grounding line. The service tech only checked voltage between the hots and neutral in the meter box and the main panel (which I think since the neutral is bonded to the grounding in the panel, it would just flow back through the grounding and give a false positive) No check was done at the transformer or with the neutral isolated from the grounding while the system was powered down. My father used to be an electrician and said that it doesn't sound right for all of the current to be returning through the ground and nothing through the service neutral, so I wanted to get the opinion of a currently licensed electrician before I contact bge again about it.


Thanks for any advice!

[tkrussell]

Well Let me try this again, was just about done with my answer and the power flickered, here I am an electrician with no UPS on my PC, and lost my answer.

First of all I must say, good troubleshooting!

The Neutral is broken someplace, most likely on the utility side. The utility tech knows about loose/broken neutrals, but he does not how the neutral and ground is connected inside, and does not realize that he is getting false reading showing that his side is good.

The best method to prove this is to shut off your Main, and disconnect the Main Neutral, so that at the meter, testing voltage across the hot and neutral must use the utility neutral for the return.

Once you get an electrician out there, and he does this, and ends up proving the utility neutral is the problem, he should be able to call them and have them send someone out right away on an Emergency Call basis.

You should not be using the anything in the building until this situation is corrected.