In electricity supply systems, an earthing system defines the electrical potential of the conductors relative to that of the Earth's conductive surface. The choice of earthing system has implications for the safety and electromagnetic compatibility of the power supply. Note that regulations for earthing (grounding) systems vary considerably between different countries.
A protective earth (PE) connection ensures that all exposed conductive surfaces are at the same electrical potential as the surface of the Earth, to avoid the risk of electrical shock if a person touches a device in which an insulation fault has occurred. It ensures that in the case of an insulation fault (a "short circuit"), a very high current flows, which will trigger an overcurrent protection device (fuse, circuit breaker) that disconnects the power supply.
A functional earth connection serves a purpose other than providing protection against electrical shock. In contrast to a protective earth connection, a functional earth connection may carry a current during the normal operation of a device. Functional earth connections may be required by devices such as surge suppression and electromagnetic interference filters, some types of antennas and various measurement instruments. Generally the protective earth is also used as a functional earth, though this requires care in some situations.
In household wiring
There are two main approaches to the problem of how to disconnect power when a live wire comes into contact with metalwork attached to the earthing system: One way is to get the resistance through the fault path and back to the supply very low by having a metallic connection from the earth back to the supply transformer (a TN system). Then when a fault happens a very high current will flow rapidly blowing a fuse (or tripping a circuit breaker).
The second approach, where such a direct connection is not used (a TT system), the resistance of the fault path back to the supply is too high for the branch circuit overcurrent protection to operate (blow a fuse or trip a circuit breaker). In such case a residual current detector is installed to detect the current leaking to ground and interrupt the circuit.
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