The deliberate connection of exposed conductive parts of an electrical installation to the ground. This provides a low-impedance path for fault currents to flow safely into the earth, triggering protective devices like circuit breakers or fuses to clear the fault. It prevents metallic enclosures from reaching dangerous voltages and protects personnel from electric shock.
We need to upgrade the substation earthing before we can safely increase the fault level on this bus.
In North America, this is almost exclusively called grounding, while earthing is the standard term in the UK, Australia, and IEC standards.
Also heard as
- grounding
Related terms
Earthing system
Arrangement describing how a supply's neutral and an installation's exposed metalwork are connected to earth.
Earth fault
Fault in which a live conductor makes unintended contact with earth or with earthed metalwork.
Equipotential bonding
Connecting metal parts together so they sit at one potential and no dangerous voltage appears between them.
Portable earths
Removable earthing leads clamped onto isolated conductors to short them together and to earth during work.