Chat ASK AI

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Russell Ensslin

Russell Ensslin

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Location
Olivehurst California
Very frustrating!

Purpose of ground rods according to chat ASK AI”

How a grounding rod contributes to ground-fault safety

Creates a reference and fault path to earth**
A grounding rod provides a low-resistance path from the electrical system to the earth. If a fault (such as a hot conductor contacting a metal enclosure) occurs, the fault current can return to the source through the earth via the grounding electrode system.

Facilitates rapid fault current for protective devices**
The ground-fault current travels from the fault to the earth and back through the grounding system to the service equipment. This helps energize overcurrent protection devices (like breakers) or ground-fault protection devices quickly, causing them to trip and disconnect the faulty circuit.

Stabilizes voltage during a fault**
By establishing a common reference point and a low-impedance path to earth, the system helps keep exposed metal parts at or near earth potential, reducing the risk of exposed-conductor contact becoming a shock hazard.

Cooperates with bonding and the equipment grounding conductor (EGC)**
The grounding electrode system (which uses rods, sometimes in combination with other electrodes) is bonded to the service equipment enclosure, the main grounding conductor, and sometimes water pipes or structural steel. This bonding ensures that a fault current has a return path and that all metal enclosures reach the same potential, minimizing differences that could cause shock.

Role in lightning and transient dissipation (indirect safety)**
While not a primary protection for steady-state faults, a good grounding system helps dissipate transient energy from lightning or switching events, reducing the chance of damaging overvoltage that could create shock or fire hazards.

Important caveats**
Ground rods alone do not carry fault currents under normal operation; the overcurrent protection and bonding paths do the actual fast-tripping work.
Effective ground-fault protection requires a well-designed grounding electrode system, proper bonding to the service equipment, and correctly sized conductors as specified by local electrical codes (e.g., NEC in the U.S.).
Ground resistance alone is not a sole indicator of safety—the system’s overall impedance and the integrity of bonding matter.

If you want, I can break this down for a specific scenario (residential service, solar wiring, or a workshop) and outline the fault path, necessary conductors, and typical protection devices involved.
 
I do not believe any general AI is sufficiently setup to handle technical electrical questions.

At present most AI is simply internet search engines that return popular topics and present them as fact even if it is nonsense. There is almost no fact checking performed.
 
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Part of the problem with AI is that the Internet is full of incorrect technical information that it can pull from and regurgitate. Over time it will get better at filtering out the garbage but it not there yet.
 
Dsg319 said:
Common man cannot understand the concept of earth grounding and ground rods. What makes you think a robot (commonly selected searches in given topic) created by man will have any different take on it.
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Agree. Mike Holt said 30 years ago 95% of information on grounding is wrong. The NEC is much much better, but we have many who are stuck on what they learned and haven’t changed.
 
Think of 'generative AI' as a statistically supported word salad generator. It simply puts words together on the basis of statistical data from the texts it was trained on. It doesn't get any of the underlying meaning, just the statistical correlation of what words follow each other.
 
infinity said:
Over time it will get better at filtering out the garbage but it not there yet.
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not sure about that ...it pretty much takes the most repeated information from the net and repeats that and sometimes even makes up things (hallucinations ) One of the selling points for the newest open AI LLM is that is has a reduced amount of hallucinations
 
AI will get better. It already has. Any technology does. The first wheel, spear, bow and arrow, boat, buggy, bicycle, car, radio, television, computer saw improvements. The same goes for software.

Getting rid of misunderstandings about grounding won't go away until we get highly educated engineers to stop treating it like it's some Holy, sanctified practice. Start telling people the truth, that a ground rod is nothing but a metal stick in the ground and putting them in the shape of a triangle and running unspliced conductors to them doesn't do anything, and people will stop thinking that it's the cure for everything from flickering lights to leprosy.
 
jim dungar said:
Follow each other regularly. General use AI is a popularity contest.
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Specific use AI has a long way to go in many instances as well. Places that use AI for answering phone calls- all they typically do is lead you in circles in most of my experiences. Some won't let you speak to a representative at all anymore, the AI is determined to help you with whatever you called for.
 
Grok is a little better “

Purpose of Ground Rods


Ground rods (also called grounding electrodes) are a key part of electrical grounding systems in homes, buildings, and other structures. Their primary purposes are:


• Provide a low-resistance path to dissipate excess electrical energy — such as from lightning strikes, power surges, or static electricity — safely into the earth.


• Stabilize system voltages relative to the earth, limiting voltage spikes from lightning, line surges, or accidental contact with higher-voltage lines.


• Equalize potential between the electrical system’s grounded parts (like metal cases of appliances) and the actual earth (soil), reducing the risk of electric shock if someone touches a faulty device while standing on the ground.


• Protect equipment and people by helping prevent fires, damage to appliances, and shocks during abnormal conditions.


Importantly, ground rods are not primarily designed to clear ground faults (e.g., a hot wire touching a metal case) in normal operation. That job falls to circuit breakers or fuses, which rely on the equipment grounding conductor and neutral bond. The rod’s earth connection has too high resistance (often 25 ohms or more) to carry enough fault current to trip a breaker reliably.


How Ground Rods Work


A ground rod is typically a long (8-10 ft) copper-clad steel rod driven vertically into the soil. It connects to the electrical system’s grounded neutral (at the main service panel) via a thick grounding electrode conductor (usually copper wire).


Here’s the step-by-step mechanism:


1. Connection to the system — The rod bonds to the neutral bus in the main panel (where neutral and ground are bonded together). This ties the entire grounding system (outlets, appliance chassis, metal pipes) to the rod.


2. Dissipating surges — During a lightning strike or surge, excess voltage enters the system. The rod provides a direct path for this energy to flow into the moist soil, where it spreads out and dissipates harmlessly. Soil acts as a conductor (better when moist), absorbing the charge.


3. Voltage equalization — The earth has a reference potential (considered “zero” volts). By connecting the system to earth via the rod, any imposed voltage (e.g., from a nearby lightning strike raising local ground potential) affects both the system and the surrounding soil equally. This prevents dangerous voltage differences — e.g., if you touch a metal appliance while standing on the ground, there’s no shock because both are at the same potential.


4. Limited role in faults — In a ground fault, current prefers the low-resistance path back to the source (via neutral wire) to trip the breaker. Only minimal current might flow through the rod/earth (high resistance), but the rod ensures the system’s ground stays near earth potential overall.


Multiple rods (spaced apart) or other electrodes (like water pipes) may be used for better performance in poor soil.
 
jim dungar said:
That is less an AI issue than it is a deliberate corporate decision to setup the phone menu that way.
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I used to be able to call my pharmacy and just use my keypad to enter prescription numbers, date of birth, etc. Now I have to speak with their AI assistant. It is terrible. Tries to get me to order scripts that I don't use anymore, but doesn't allow me to order what I need. I finally figured out that if I say "live person" enough it will send me to voicemail and someone will call back.
It's a mixture of AI and the pharmacy not wanting to take calls!
 
All these chatbots do right now is scrape a lot of language (mostly from the internet) and then BS statistically average sentences related to the words you prompted it with. They do not reason and cannot relate the language to physical objects. They have a distinct speed advantage over a human trying to similarly BS their way through plausibly answering a random question, but it's still BS. Grounding electrodes are a good example of how a lot of bad information on the internet can throw off a BS agent. Any subject can be poisoned like this. There's no particular reason to believe that the situation there will get better, just as there no particular track record of humans on average getting better at it discerning knowledge from BS. To the extent that companies are developing AIs (not merely chatbots) capable of producing novel knowledge, you can be sure they are not giving that knowledge away for free. You get what you pay for, unless you're getting scammed.
 
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