Electrical – Properly grounding equipment with a ground screw

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I have an NVR that has a power brick and a separate ground screw. What is the "Right way" (read: safest way) to connect this to ground? I've thought of a couple ways to do it.

Ground Screw

My 4 options are:

  1. Leave it unconnected. This seems like a bad idea, since several cameras are outside and I want to have at least some protection against ESD.

  2. "Run a line" off the outlet. Either splice in an extra wire that sticks out of the outlet cover (Seems like a terrible idea), use the screw in the center of the outlet, or get some sort of special outlet with an extra screw.

Run a line off the outlet

  1. Use an ESD plug

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  1. Use some sort of ground only plug.

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Best Answer

Grounding of metal cased equipment is most often done for safety reasons, rather than ESD protection. If a fault occurs inside the equipment that places line voltage on the chassis, the voltage is shunted to ground and will trip the breaker on the circuit. This protects you from accidental electrocution.

Edit: Since this is powered by a brick, safety grounding is unlikely. For ESD protection, the wire can simply be connected to any suitable earth ground. I would suggest whatever method you find most esthetically pleasing.