I live in a two story duplex, yesterday the other unit's electricity went off, the electrician diagnosed that somehow their neutral path is not coming from the pole so he connected the neutral connection from my meter to their neutral (changing some wires through circuit breaker). He was doing it through circuit breakers as we don't have a main breaker.
So my question is "with the live wire from his meter but a neutral path through my meter, is my meter is being used?"
Electrical – Taking a neutral wire from another meter connection
electricalmeterneutral
Related Solutions
Arc-Fault Circuit Interrupter (AFCI) receptacles are similar to Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) receptacles, in that they both operate on the Line / Load idea. When connecting an AFCI receptacle, downstream devices are only protected if they are connected to the Load side of the device. If devices are connected in parallel using pigtails on the Line side, they will not be protected by the AFCI device.
Since connection-wise, AFCI and GFCI receptacles are similar. The answers to these questions can be useful in this situation as well.
- How can I add a GFCI breaker on two circuits with a shared neutral without rewiring?
- How do I install a GFCI receptacle with two hot wires and common neutral?
Basically, these devices only monitor the wires on the Load side of the device. Which means, anything upstream on the Line side doesn't really matter. Sharing a neutral should not be a problem, as long as it's done properly (e.g. don't share a Load side neutral, only share the Line side neutral before the device).
I've labeled some things in your photo, that might help you understand what's going on.
The wires coming up into the panel are your service conductors, of which you have two "hot" and one "neutral". From there you have "hot" branch-circuit conductors, which are connected through circuit breakers. There's also a branch-circuit "neutral", for each branch circuit.
You seem to be concerned that one of the branch-circuit "neutral" conductors, is terminated under the same lug as the service "neutral". Which is a valid concern. You'd have to check the documentation or labeling on the panel, to determine how many conductors can be terminated at that terminal. National Electrical Code limits each terminal to one conductor, but allows device manufacturers to override that as long as there is documentation stating such.
It looks to me like that circuit predates the other two, and possibly even the panel itself. I'm guessing when they updated the panel, that conductor wouldn't physically reach the "neutral" bus. Instead of splicing the wire, they simply terminated it with the service "neutral".
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Best Answer
TL;DR: CALL YOUR ELECTRIC UTILITY ON THEIR EMERGENCY NUMBER
It sounds like you live in a duplex with dual services -- in that case, call your utility ASAP. What the electrician did was a very dirty hack that will not pass Code muster, and likely screw with the electrical metering -- it will also break in interesting ways if later on the utility puts the two units on different transformer secondaries.
BTW -- an open neutral is an emergency situation, as it can easily be a fire and/or shock hazard.