Importance of the neutral system
Protection Plan for Medium Voltage Public Distribution Networks

Earth faults affecting a network can cause :

• rise in ground potential at fault location (see § 4.1 );

• network users' outages at the time of disposal.

In the first case, there are risks relating to the protection of goods and living beings; in the second, the quality of supply is affected.

Given that around 80% of all faults on MV networks are earth faults, and that their type depends to a large extent on how the network's neutral is earthed, it's easy to see why the choice of neutral system is so important.